$2.

50

THE

AMERICAN ATHEIST
A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

(VoI.25, No.6) June, 1983

Twentieth Anniversary

June, 1963 - June, 1983

1983

1963

********************************************************************
of

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
In 1959, the Murray family started a legal case which was destined to reach the United States Supreme Court
to be decided there on June 17, 1963just;twenty years ago. The name of the case was Murray u. Curlett and the
decision of that august body was that bible reading and unison prayer recitation in the public schools of the land
were both unconstitutional exercises vis-a-vis the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
The road from 1959 to 1963 was hard and long. Scores of attorneys were contacted to handle the case and
each and all were afraid of it. Indeed the attorney who drafted the original complaint which was filed with the
court quit the case a week thereafter. The Murray family insisted from the beginning that it should be known
that they were opposed to the exercise of bible reading and prayer recitation because they were Atheists, and
no attorney wanted to mention that in the case. But, Madalyn Murray insisted, and finally one attorney asked
her to draw up a short statement (about 250 words) on what an Atheist was that would be put into their petition
for relief. That statement was written - and became famous as the media across the land reproduced it
everywhere. Now, these twenty years later, we reproduce it here for you:

"Your petitioners are Atheists and they define their lifestyle as follows. An Atheist loves
himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist accepts that heaven is somethingfor
which we should work now - here on earth - for all men together to. enjoy. An Atheist
accepts that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner
conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist
accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find
the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment.
\
"Therefore, he seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to 'know' a god. An
Atheist accepts that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An Atheist accepts that a
deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not
escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He
wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life.He accepts that we
cannot rely on a god nor channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a
hereafter. He accepts that we are - in a sense - our brothers' keepers in that we are, first,
keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons, that the job is here and the time is
now. "

*********************************************~**********************
. AMERICAN ATHEISTS

P.O.BOX 2117

AUSTIN, TX 78768-2117

Send $40 for one year's membership. You will receive our "Insider's Newsletter" monthly,
your membership certificate and card, and a one year subscription to this magazine.

(Vol. 25, No.6) June, 1983

THE "W E" 0 F US.

REGULAR FEATURES
Editorial: "Twenty Years"
Dial-an-Atheist

2
15

ARTICLES
Religious Pacifism and the Draft - Jeffrey Vowles
16
Physician Prescribes Atheism for Himself - Lawrence Young .. 19
The State Aid Drain - Mark Plummer ...............
29
Proposal for a Media Campaign - John Massen
34
What the Public Doesn't Understand about the End of the World
- John Somerville .....................
37
Thermodynamics and Evolution - John Patterson
39

FEATURED COLUMNISTS
Selective Abortion - Margaret Bhatty

COMMEMORATIVE

47

ARTICLES & EVENTS

The Way It Was: June 17, 1963 - Gerald Tholen

Murray Family Photo: 1963
\
Supreme Court Decision in Murray v. Curlett: June 17, 1963
In the Beginning - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Thirteenth Annual National American Atheists Convention
Photo Section

7
8
9
14
20
21

POETRY
A Light - Robin Eileen Murray O'Hair
At Last - Bertha Goodall (In Memoriam)
Editor-in-Chief
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Managing Editor
Jon G. Murray
Assistant Editor
Richard M. Smith
Poetry
Robin Murray O'Hair
Angeline Bennett
Gerald Tholen
Production Staff
Art Brenner
BillKight
Gerald Tholen
Gloria Tholen
Alexander Stevens
Non-Resident Staff
G. Stanley Brown
Jeff Frankel
Merrill Holste
Margaret Bhatty
Fred Woodworth
Clayton Powers

Austin, Texas

38
48

The American Atheist magazine is published monthly at the Gustav Broukal American Atheist Press, 2210 Hancock Dr., Austin, TX 78756, and 1982 by Society of
Separationists, Inc., a non-profit, non-political, educational organization dedicated to
the complete and absolute separation of
state and church. Mailing address: P.O. Box
2117/Austin, TX 78768-2117. A free subscription is provided as an incident of membership in the American Atheists organization. Subscriptions are available at $25.00
for one year terms only. Manuscripts submitted must be typed, double-spaced and
accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope. The editors assume no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts.
The American Atheist magazine
is indexed in
Monthly Periodical Index
ISSN: 0332-4310

June, 1983

For the past twenty

years,
only three persons have borne
the principal brunt of the hostility engendered
by the fight, in
our nation,
for freedom
from
religion.
Bill Murray, the original young
man involved in the case of Murray v. Curlett, which removed
bible reading and prayer recitattion from the public schools,
split off from his fam ily in 1964
to lead an ordinary life (except
for a period of six months when
he was being helped with employment at The Atheist Center_)
This was not so with the rest
of the Murray-O'Hair
family
which stood solidly together to
take it on the chin. Those three,
without let-up, have been at the
very eye of the hurricane
and
from that bitter experience have
come to think of themselves as
apart, "The We of Us," in a prolonged, a lonesome and vicious
fight.
You know all three and you
know them well: Madalyn Murray 0 'Hair, now 64 years old and
still dedicated
to the fight; Jon
Murray, now 27, who has never
known any other life than that
of warding off hostility;
Robin
Murray-O'Hair,
age 18, born into
and during her entire life, immersed in the gall of religous
hate.
Those twenty years have been
ugly, But out of it "The We of
Us" have carved an institution
with a base that will never falter:
the American Atheist Center - a
little toehold
from which they
can continue with it all: a home
they call "Fort O'Hair" - a lifestyle wherein mutual love and
respect fortifies determ inationand an infectious
conviction
which they spread to all Atheists
that if the good fight is continued the light of reason will be
found at the end of this dark
tunnel of human madness known
as religion.

Page 1

TWENTY YEARS
When the Supreme Court came down with its decision in
the case of Murray v. Curlett in June of 1963I was only eight
years old. One of two sons of (then) Madalyn Murray, I was
plunged at that tender age into the midst of heated public
controversy that has never ceased. I have, literally, grown
up in and with the American Atheist movement. This year
American Atheists is celebrating its twentieth anniversary.
You will, therefore, find this issue of the The American
Atheist to be a very special one in honor of that anniversary.
The pertinent part of the Murray v. Curlett decision is being
reproduced here in the pages of this issue so I need not
comment on that landmark case directly as you can read it
for yourself in the words of the Supreme Court Justices of
the 60s era. I would like instead to give you, the reader, my
impressions of the twenty year struggle through which the
American Atheist organization has been. My view is from
the inside looking out and may therefore be quite different
even from the view of some of you long-time supporters
who have been with the organization from its inception.
My look at twenty years of organized American Atheism
must revolve around a single term. It is unfortunate indeed
that twenty years of work, and damn hard work at that,
should come down to a single term. A number of perceptions ultimately can be couched in simple terms in life and
organizing Atheists is no exception. That single term is
survival. For that is the very thing that this unique organization has been doing, essentially, when all things are
considered for the past twenty years. We have been in what
I call a survival mode. This survival mode has two parts to it,
and I willget to both of them in a minute.
First, however, Iwould like to point out that the trials and
tribulations of organizing groups of individuals are not
unique to an Atheist organization. Organizing is organizing
no matter for what or with whom. The logistics of banding a
group of like-minded individuals together to accomplish
certain goals are the same across the board regardless of
the "likeness" which establishes the common denominator
for the group. Political groups, social groups, ethnic groups,
sexual orientation groups, age groups all have the same
steps they must go through to set up and run an organizetion. Even religious groups must do the same kinds of
things. The group must first define itself, which means to set
up a limiting criteria for membership. It must then establish
goals or aims and purposes, i.e. principles. Call them what
you will the group must decide on what it wants to
accomplish. It must set up a work flow and a division of
labor among the members. Most importantly of all, it must
create a uniform policy of public action based upon its
principles and execute that policy in a planned way. The
public policy of any organization must be controlled by that
organization and the exponents of its policy - not by those
on the receiving end, the public. Of course, in order to
Page 2

June, 1983

execute anything funding is required and the logical place to

obtain that funding is from the membership of the group at
large. AUgroups function in this manner. Almost all groups
have a fairly easy time going through these logical logistical
steps toward marketing their "product." With a cause
organization the "product" is an idea instead of something
like soap in the case of a business. Business techniques are
very useful, however, in marketing a non-businesslike
"product" like an idea.
Now what does all of this have to do with twenty years of
American Atheists? Plenty. Most cause groups have no
problems with setting up and executing the logical progression of logistical steps from formation through achievement
of goals. Some have tremendous problems in accomplishing their logical progression. One of those groups has
been American Atheists. Why? It is because American
Atheists is a group defined by a set of individuals who have
idea sets and a lifestyle which are unacceptable to the rest of
"society." Those groups that organize around culturally
acceptable idea sets or lifestyles are the ones that have no
problems. A joggers' club, for example, has little problem.
Even a political organization has little problem. The problems begin, classically, with a group whose members share
a view of lifein general that is based on premises contrary to
the majority of the society in which they find themselves. It
does not matter if the majority is "right" or "wrong" in their
view as long as the group members' views differ, substantially, from what is considered the "norm." Emphasis needs to
be placed on the word "substantially." Minor deviation is
tolerable. Major deviation is not tolerable. In the case of
American Atheists we have the market cornered on a major
deviation from society as a whole. So, American Atheists
can then be said to be a deviant organization, from a
sociological perspective. That classification into which we
fit well spells out why we have had problems with the basics
of organizing.
At each step along the way in the normal progression of
organization, from inception forward, there has been
substantial interference, applied both from external points
and - unfortunately - from internal positions as we have
been deliberately infiltrated for "destabilization" purposes
only. The interference is a function of our deviance from
society. That is why I have keyed on the word survival. We
have been trying to survive attacks from without. The
purpose of these attacks is to keep the group from
accomplishing its logistical steps so that it will (hopefully, in
the minds of the attackers) never even reach the point of
marketing a public platform.
One could easily pin this interference on the "religious
community" in general but that is not exactly the case. The
greatest interference has been from individual religionists,
not from organized religious groups such as churches.
The American Atheist

When I say individual religionists, I have to modify that by

saying individual religionists in social or economic power
positions within the community. Twenty years ago the
religious community as a whole did not perceive American
Atheists as any threat whatsoever. Recently that has
changed as the pope and president Reagan have both now
come to claim Atheists specifically as the origin of world evil.
I don't know about you, but I am kind of proud of that. Ifwe
are getting noticed specifically now we must be doing
something right.
Let me get back to the point of interference, and give you
some specific examples of what I mean. American Atheists
now has Chapters in 27 states. Each of those Chapters has
to be registered with the Secretary of State's office in each
of those states in order to "do business" therein as a local
committee of the national educational corporation. That
registration process has not been an easy one. Every
possible regulation has been used against us to keep
American Atheists from legitimatizing its branches. A good
example is one of the most recently established Chapters in
Connecticut. The State of Connecticut required a list of the
Board of Directors and officers of the national office in its
forms for local registration. Well, most states do; that was
nothing new. Connecticut also required "street" addresses
for those Board members and officers. Now two of the
national Board members of American Atheists live on
acreage they own. They only have a rural route or box
address at best, not a "street" address. When the application for registration was submitted with a small town box
address, Connecticut rejected it and said that it wanted a
plat of their acreage. Now that is ridiculous to ask someone
to provide a plat of their land for mailing address purposes.
We are not currently registered in Connecticut due to the
inordinate demands of an individual religionist in that state's
offices.
When an organization forms and takes the option of
incorporation and chooses the style of incorporation to be
that of educational and non-stock, non-profit, the organization is then entitled to some classification of Federal tax
exemption. When a religious group applies for a Federal
exemption under the classification of religion its exemption
is granted almost immediately. When American Atheists
originally applied for exemption as an educational corporation it took nine years of battle with the IRS in and out of its
various administrative levels to gain the exemption. Additionally, a federal court suit finally had to be filed. Since the
exemption was won, either the organization, Dr. Madalyn
O'Hair (its founder), Richard O'Hair (her now deceased
husband), or I have been audited no less than 17 times. Tell
me the last time the IRS audited a church in your
community? Never. The auditors got to know us so well at
one point that they would bring their kids with them to play
in the office while they went over our books.
American Atheists needed office space but could not
afford traditional office space as such. It finally procured a
small frame house out of which to operate. No sign was
erected, just desks, a mimeograph and files etc. inside. The
little house was immediately found to be in violation of
Austin zoning ordinances, despite the fact that in Austin
one may utilize one's home for any business activity as long
as a sign is not erected in the yard, or put on the house. A
special zoning trial was called for 11:30 p.m. - that's right,
p.m.! - one night to "get the Atheists." In order to continue
Austin, Texas

using that little frame house Dr. O'Hair and her husband
Richard had to declare it a church, the only entity free from
any zoning restriction. Since Dr. O'Hair had been a longtime personal friend of Kirby Hensley, he sent her extraordinary documents to establish that the house was a
Universal Life Church in order to get around the zoning
laws being used to shut the office down. Since no sign had
been erected, there was no violation - except if the
business was Atheism.
The same sort of thing immediately happened when the
office facilities were actually moved into an "office building."
First, the fire inspections came. Well, that was o.k. Fire
inspections are a good thing, normally - but not three or
four times as often as any other building in town. The fire
inspector came once or twice a year to every other building
on the block, but he came every month to the Atheist
building with rule book in hand.
With the procurement of a regular office building came a
regular mortgage on that building and a mortgage meant
getting insurance to cover the mortgage holder. That was
easier said than done. We had a sign over the building
saying "American Atheist Center." Not a single insurance
company in the state would cover a building with a sign
identifying it as "Atheist." The risk of our being bombed or
burnt out was too great, they said. That in itself is enough to
show the need of having an organized group for Atheists in
the first place. Finally, a composite policy of five companies
each covering a fifth of the needed amount had to be put
together to insure the building. One of those companies was
Lloyd's of London. As you may imagine, that did wonders
for the cost of that first policy. Now after years of operation
with that sign intact and the building not burnt down, the
premium on the American Atheist Center policy has gone
down every year.
An office needs telephones and the Atheist Center was
no exception. Here again it was not easy. Installation was no
problem, but when it came to billing there was the rub. The
Center began to get monthly bills with calls made by other
phone company customers billed to it. A lot of them were
long distance charges that ran into a fair piece of money.
This kept up for months until the hierarchy of the phone
company traced it down to one employee in the billing
department who was deliberately putting other customers'
charges on the Atheist Center bill out of religious motivations alone. That employee was terminated and the problems stopped. That round was won pretty easily.
The demographics of American Atheists, like most
groups, made it necessary to do virtually everything
through the mails. When we first started, the return address
legend of "Atheist" gave us problems you would not believe.
We received "special handling" from the Post Office time
and time again. For example, for some time we could not get
a package delivered properly in Chicago with the word
Atheist in the return address for any reason. Individual
postal employees went out of their way to misroute and
misfile and misdirect our mail both outgoing and incoming.
We found it necessary from the beginning to abide by all
postal rules and regulations to the letter with double the
specificity of other postal customers. We are now to the
point that we know the postal regulations better than most
postal employees. We had to to survive. Through that effort
we have now gained the respect of the supervisory levels of
the Post Office to such a degree that they willgo to bat for us

June, 1983

Page 3

and enforce their "neutrality" guidelines for mail handling.

Post Office supervisors are now policing workers to the
extent that we have almost reached normalcy in handling of
our mail. We still have the occasional item returned as
"moved left no address" when the person has been in the
same house for twenty years and still is. It is nowhere near
as common, however, as it used to be. When they know
that everything that comes out of the Atheist Center is
properly prepared, they cannot do else but handle it with
neutrality. We have handled and covered every "excuse"
for the mishandling of our mail.
A cause group also necessarily has to have meetings of its
membership. If you don't have your own meeting hall, you
must seek public accommodations. We did and found them
closed to Atheists' meetings from the beginning. Hotels and
motels did not care to "turn off" other customers by renting
space to an Atheist group for meetings. We had to literally
beg for space for the first three or four national conventions
we tried to hold. We had to come up with exorbitant
security bonds and we had to pay for security guards who
were there not to protect us against religious nuts but to
"protect" the hotel from the Atheists. Rates were higher for
us than for other cause groups. As in the case of the Post
Office, however, as we did have meeting after meeting and
convention after convention without incident we again
gained the respect of hotel management. Now the hotels
and motels fight tooth and nail with each other for our
business in any given city. We have demonstrated that
Atheists are good normal people. We clean up after
ourselves and comport ourselves with dignity and business
composure. We often leave the hotel managements
shocked that we left the rented area cleaner and in better
shape than we found it. We pay in advance or on time which
is even better than the majority of religious groups who rent
meeting facilities, or so we are told by many managers.
An office also needs business equipment and business
services. We had to establish accounts with suppliers, etc.
For the first many years American Atheists had to purchase
all the products and services it needed with cash. We were
not extended credit by anyone. Finally, after being good
steady customers for years, one business at a time began to
extend small amounts of credit under unreasonable conditions. We met those conditions and kept our credit in good
standing and over a period of time we won their confidence,
too - just like that of the Post Office and the hotels and the
insurance companies and all the rest. Still, from time to time
we run into bigoted persons. We recently tried to purchase
some new video equipment from a local merchant in Austin.
I had an appointment set up with a sales representative of
the merchant on a Wednesday for the following Monday
morning. The sales representative called me on Saturday
and said that his boss, the business owner, had ordered him
not to keep the appointment. His boss had said that he
would not sell equipment to "that woman" referring to Dr.
O'Hair. The sales person was so embarrassed that he could
hardly speak. He said that he had never encountered this in
many long years as a salesman in this field. He recommended his competition in town to me and offered his
technical advice. These incidents are becoming very rare
now and I am glad.
When an organization sets up to do business, they need
to have money to operate. Money means, sooner or later,
association with a bank. In the case of American Atheists
Page 4

June, 1983

we have gone through some eight or nine banks now

searching for one that would handle us just like any other
customer. What could a bank do to an Atheist organization,
you may ask. How about a bank clerk deliberately bouncing
a check when more than enough funds were in the account
to cover it? That has happened more than once to
American Atheists. We have had bible tracts show up in our
deliberately inaccurate monthly statements. We have had
bank employees write "God bless you" on our cancelled
checks. We have been denied loans when we had adequate
collateral and references. Our deposits have been mysteriously lost or credited to the wrong accounts. How did we
overcome this? By now you would say by winning their
confidence like with the insurance companies, Post Office,
hotels and merchants. No, sadly enough that was not the
case with the banks. In their case we simply finally amassed
a large enough balance with them to make us a valued
depositor. Only the attainment of a certain level of monetary investment did the trick in the case of the banks. They
had to treat us right when we had enough money on
deposit.
In all of the above examples American Atheists has over
and over again expressed a willingness to work within the
system with determination to be treated equally. We have
not run from the system and we are not freaks who are
determined to overthrow the entire system that discriminates against us. We are instead reformers who feel
that our continued tenacious participation within the system willserve to reform the system as a whole thus making
it better for all concerned. When one is confronted with a
bigot blocking the path, it is not proper to get off the path
and give way. The bigot must yield. If everyone placed in
such a position would make the bigot yield, there would
soon be far less of them around to block paths. Some
organizations have retreated from society and gone into
hiding, or drugs, or communes, etc. A far more logical and
rational position is to stand your ground and make society
accept you. This is what American Atheists has been all
about.
In addition to surviving these attacks from individual
religionists supported by the community we have been
assaulted on the legal front as well. Attorneys in our nation
have been by and large scared to death of handling litigation
for Atheist plaintiffs. They fear, for the most part, the loss of
established clientele from the publicity surrounding association with an Atheist plaintiff. Over the years as with some of
the institutions already mentioned attorneys who have
handled American Atheists as a plaintiff have not lost their
clientele. In fact, the publicity gained from an Atheist
plaintiff has increased their "notoriety" and garnered them
more business instead of less. Still, each new attorney that
we approach to this day has the same trepidations and we
still have a problem in this area.
Given the attorney situation it became immediately
necessary for Dr. O'Hair, President of American Atheists,
to handle most of the litigation pro se. That is under her own
name as an individual plaintiff usually under the category of
"a taxpayer." Legal ventures of this type, however, carry
with them as a corollary attempts by the state defendants at
"piercing the corporate veil." That means that the state tries
to show that the educational corporation does not in fact
exist but is merely the same as its representative individual
litigant. Put more bluntly, they try to show that Dr. O'Hair is
The American Atheist

the organization and the organization is only one person,

Dr. O'Hair. We have been able, however, to preserve the
"corporation sole" status of American Atheists. It is important to maintain the identity of the group as a group rather
than allowing the courts to isolate an individual so that they
can dismiss litigation on the basis of the plaintiff being a
"single kook." This has been a difficult task, but it has been
accomplished.
Our ability to work within the legal structure has also
been firmly established. We have shown the courts over
and over again that we can defeat the arguments of state
defendants (and we most often find ourselves up against
state or federal entities in an attempt to coerce them to
follow their own constitutional guidelines) with their own
references playing in their home court. We have thus again
won respect as a legal adversary that cannot be dismissed
as being kooky.
You may have gathered by now that respect is a very
important goal for an unpopular cause organization. If you
can win the respect of the persons who disagree with you, it
is far easier to handle them and the harassment they
generate.
Speaking of harassment in a legal context, American
Atheists has survived at least a dozen major harassment
suits of varying magnitudes. An example-of a harassment
suit is the case in which a religious attorney sued Dr. O'Hair
for alienation of affection - his "affection for Jesus." He
said that he should have damages because her speeches
had placed doubt in his heart about this "Jesus." Although
we have survived many such "suits," it is regrettable that a
large portion of the energy and time and money of the
organization has had to be expended in that effort. We
could have used those funds and energies far more
productively along the way in promoting the aims and
purposes of the organization. The harassment suits accomplished their purpose, which was exactly to expend the
energy and fund of an Atheist organization and keep it from
going forward as rapidly as may have otherwise been
possible. Even entities as large as nations have to "prove
themselves" for the first many years of their existence. This
nation had to do so after the initial revolution that separated
it from England, and more recently Israel has done so
repeatedly since its formation after World War II. We have
been able to get the job done, though. We keep coming
back up after each swat like one of those roly-poly toys that
bounce back upright after being punched. (Of course, that
does not mean to say that we have not grown tired of being
swatted.)
American Atheists has also had the, United States
government trying to put it out of business along the w,ay.
The organization was the subject of FBI and CIA Cointel
operations for years. We had our suspicions all along but
they were not confirmed until the passage of the Freedom of
Information Act. Through that act, we were able to obtain
heavily censored copies of files kept by U.S. intelligence
organizations on American Atheists. Censored as they
were, they were enough to verify that the organization had
been under surveiIlance for quite some time. I think that the
most upsetting part of the surveiIlance was that our "crime"
was being pro complete-and-absolute separation of state
and church. Yes, you are reading correctly. The government of the United States felt, officially, that being pro
separation of state and church was criminal activity for a
Austin, Texas

citizen or a group of citizens. Speaking and writing and

distributing information on that subject was viewed as
detrimental to the security interests of the United States.
Yet the principle of separation of state and church is a
cornerstone of the Constitution. No matter how hard the
surveillance agencies spied we established beyond the
shadow of a doubt that we were operating within the law at
all times. Each and every form of protest venture in which
we engaged was within normal channels set up and
guaranteed by the Constitution to be maintained for
dissent. When we could not be touched on a factual basis,
the agencies fabricated "wrong doing" and spread rumors
to that effect in the media and. elsewhere. That was, of
course, the modus operandi of the entire Cointel operation.
This brings me to the topic of the media and its handling
of American Atheists over the years. I can say unequivocally that the media in all its forms has slandered, maligned,
abused, lied about, and misrepresented the position of both
Atheist individuals and groups as a consistent policy for the
last twenty years. I really can count on the fingers of one
hand the times that we have been given a fair shake by any
reporter or writer over the years. Atheists have had every
trick in the book used to make them look bad personally or
to misrepresent their positions on every relevant issue. We
have demonstrated that we are capable of handling ourselves in every type of adversary situation. This comes with
experience but it also comes from doing one's homework.
We know our facts and we have demonstrated repeatedly
that faiths are no match for facts. We have played the
"rating game" with station after station and won. That
means that we have shown them that the subject of Atheism
can generate more controversy and hence more ratings for
their station than about any other topic short of perhaps
politics or abortion. The fears of stations, similar to those of
attorneys, of losing their advertisers over airing Atheist
views have been allayed. Great progress has also been
made in establishing the independence of "the organization" to represent its positions with a variety of competent
spokespersons and not just a single "star." Dr. O'Hair has
been unwillinglyplaced in a "star" role by the media over the
years by their objection to accepting any alternate spokesperson for the cause. This "star system" predominant in the
American media scene today is still a problem but to a much
lesser degree than it has been in the past. Many fine local
and Chapter spokespersons are now talking on behalf of
the American Atheist organization consistently in their
areas.
I have been talking so far about only one of the two
aspects of the the survival mode that American Atheists has
been in for some twenty years now. That was survival with
respect to attacks from without. The second aspect of
survival is with respect to disagreements and attacks from
within. We have had this survival problem as welL The first
example of this goes back to what I said earlier about any
organization needing to define and delimit its constituency
and its objectives. American Atheists has had a problem
with that definition process for some time now. At the first
national convention of American Atheists and to some
extent again at the second one the major part of the
conference was spent in trying to define the word" Atheist."
In three days of talks in two annual meetings in a row about
100 or so delegates could not agree on what "Atheism" was
or was not. During the debate on Atheism the problem of

June, 1983

PageS

agnosticism came up also. I think now that American

Atheists has been able to go beyond that stage now. We
don't need to debate over agnosticism anymore or engage
in countless hours of circular philosophical argumentation.
Our basic premise is now firm and very simple. We have
around us what is empirically verifiable through the scientific method at its present technical capacity. Anything that
cannot be empirically verifiable, directly or indirectly, does
not exist, period. Very simple. No matter how much one
may wish it otherwise, we have only what does exist - what
exhibits measurable properties. The concept of a god or
gods does not fit into the existence set, so therefore it is not.
Plain and simple. No god. Godism in all its forms is simply
individual or collective hallucination. There is nothing to
argue about. All persons either fall into one of two camps:
Those who accept, on faith, that something exists outside of
the set of empirically verifiable things; or those who accept
on a rational and scientific basis the contents of the set of
existing things. It is a total waste of human effort to try to
debate over the possible existence of something which has
no evidence to support even the possibility of it existing. It is
simply ridiculous. IfI say that little hobbits with hairy feet live
in the woods, the burden of proof is on me in a scientific
context to come up with a hob bit. Ifin a reasonable amount
of time I cannot come up with one, or any tangible evidence
for one, then hobbits simply don't exist. End of discussion. I
do not have to "keep and open mind" about the possible
existence of hobbits in order to remain "intellectually
honest." The same goes for the concept of god as for the
concept of a hobbit.
A group, any group, which wants to stand a chance of
achieving a set of goals has to first get its basic principles
down, which includes a definition, and develop a cadre
system based on those principles. Ifyou spend all your time
questioning your basic position, how can you expect to get
anything accomplished? The answer is that you can't
expect to accomplish very much. In order to move forth
systematically from a basic position all the members of the
group have to be educated as to what that basic position is.
We have had a little problem with that educational process
over the years, but we are progressing in our ability to turn
out more and more printed (and other) information establishing and reinforcing the basics of American Atheism.
On the legal front we have faced internal dissent among
members as to when and how and which issues should be
litigated by the organization. We have overcome disagreement in this area by mounting a quantity of cases in various
areas designed to "play the odds" of winning in a court
structure. The religious community knows how to play this
game very well. In the areas of creationism or tuition tax
credits they introduce legislation or litigate in a given state;
and if they lose there, they learn from the reasons they lost
and try again in another state. American Atheists has been
trying, as we can, to do the same thing. We are, however,
greatly limited by finances from doing exactly what the
religious community can do in the legal area. For the
financial reason alone we often have to go with symbolic
litigation when we cannot tackle an issue that would require
large amounts of evidentiary research which is very costly.
A suit concerning exemption of church property from
taxation would require the gathering of millions of dollars of
statistical evidence as to exactly what they do own and
where. On the other hand, challenging the printing of
Page 6

June, 1983

money with the phrase "In God We Trust" on it is a very

cheap suit to file and pursue, since the only evidence is a
dollar billand the cite of the law authorizing the phrase to be
placed thereon.
American Atheists has also faced internal dissent on the
issue of "democracy." The membership at large wishes to
vote on what the organization leadership does. In order to
do so, however, they have to be informed on each issue so
that they know enough about all the contingencies to vote.
The national leadership on the other hand is privy on a daily
basis to the information required to make decisions on each
issue. The logistical concerns of getting that information to
the rank and file membership are so great that the
organization would do nothing but process and mail
information and wait for any tally ballots. There would not
be enough time or energy remaining to move on what the
membership voted to do. The majority of the European
"freethought" groups have done this for some 100 years or
more now. They spend all their time stuck in arguments
over procedure and voting and counting the ballots, and
they have hence done little but stagnate. Most of them are
now composed primarily of aged persons who have been
talking over procedure and taking votes until they are now
too feeble to actually do anything. When it comes to
"cause" organizations, democracy kills. The individuals
within the group who are, first, competent and, second,
willing to assume a leadership role just simply have to take
command and proceed while the others back them up with
financial and moral support. American Atheists for many
years was not even able to muster enough persons willingto
participate in decision making to fill all the slots for the
required number of Board of Directors members. It is only a
recent phenomenon that the Board of Directors now has a
full roster.
Unfortunately, American Atheists has suffered some
splintering over the issue of "democracy." It is curious,
however, that each and every small group that has split off
over the years over this issue has quickly come to the
position of doing away with votes on a practical level in short
order within their own little group. The proof of the pudding
is in trying to operate on a day-to-day basis where decisions,
some of which are very important, need to be made on a
moment's notice. In such a setting polling the membership
is not alone impractical but downright dangerous. Also,
when American Atheists has polled its rank and fileor asked
for a vote on a certain issue, the percentage return on that
vote or poll has always been less than half.
American Atheists has competent national leadership
and staff backed up by many competent local Chapter
representatives and officers. Over time it has been demonstrated that a participatory democratic structure is not
necessary to growth, maintenance and success of the
group. That does not mean that member input should be
ignored. It is not. It is constantly taken into consideration
and given paramount respect and weight in the decisionmaking process.
In conclusion then, American Atheists has over the past
twenty years - to use a colloquial expression - been
"getting its shit together." The organization has demonstrated the ability to survive both assaults from adversaries
from without and to work out solutions to disputes from
within. That process of getting organized has taken twenty
years in the case of an Atheist group because of the fact that
The American Atheist

it represents a lifeview that is alien to that held by society as

for many generations. New ideas always require
time to gain a foothold in society. It took more than twenty
years for the general public to accept the automobile as a
dependable means for transportation. I therefore really
don't think that American Atheists has a thing to be
ashamed of for laboring in a survival mode for twenty years
to establish itself as a permanent fixture on the American
scene. Our adversaries as well as society as a whole know
now that Atheists are here to stay. We are viable members
of the community. We are not to be outcasts. We must be
dealt with in the same manner, with equality, as any other
segment of society. We are not going to go away. Our
presence has been firmly established. We have also established a physical base of operations and a permanent,
dedicated constituency. American Atheists is now established as an entity above and beyond any single one of its
members or leaders. It is a perpetual organization that will
continue to represent the point of view of the Atheist
segment of the population long after any present leadership
is no longer.
Given that the survival stage is now behind us, it is time
now during the next twenty years for American Atheists to
enter into a new era of activity. In this new era the thrust will
be toward offensive, aggressive presentation of the aims
and purposes of the group rather than a primarily defensive
posture as in the past. It is now time to move out on a more
local level with strong national support and guidance. We

a whole

The Way It Was

June 17, 1963

In the ongoing struggle for the survival of Atheism and its

reality, as in any conflict, there are tragic losses suffered.
The case of the Murray (O'Hair) family is no exception. On
the following page is a 1963photo of the "victorious" Atheist
family, which only sought to right a nationally admitted
wrong. The realization of their unusual constitutional win
should have brought with it respect and a place of dignity in
a nation of freedom loving people. Ironically, the "treaty"
agreed to by the U.S. Supreme Court only marked the
beginning of a war then yet to come - not the war's end.
From that day of victory, religion was unsettled, shocked
into the reality of knowing that an Atheist had finallymade a
significant change in "god's domain" heretofore in the
public schools of the nation. Prior half-hearted "tolerance"
and make-believe "fair play" were quickly discarded by the
religious community. The mask came off, the vicious nature
of religion was revealed anew for the Murrays were "fair
game" and the religious "had at them." The long and bitter
fight that followed in the next twenty years welded together
the more adamant and determined Atheists, of which there
were few in our nation. But there were some and the Murray
wisp of hope for separation of state and church was
supported. But, the faint of heart cringed in the face of that
religious harassment and sought to hide themselves in the
seclusion of their own minds.
Bill Murray was unable to do this. He was, at first, too
easily recognized. Yet, at the same time, a fanatical society,
would somehow find away to make him pay for his part in
Austin, Texas

have been accepted now in the community, but only as far

as our mere existence. We must now now reach the next
plateau of being accepted when we take action on our own
behalf rather than merely existing.
The national leadership and staff of American Atheists
has borne the brunt of the survival process for the first
twenty years and we have won. Now it is up to all of you
individual Atheists out there to get into the act in phase two.
All of you have to be ambassadors of reason in your
communities. That is, after all, what Atheism is all about reason and intelligence applied to life. We are over the
beachhead and we have established a foothold. Atheists
have now carved out their niche in society. We have not
given up and Jim Jonesed it in some tropical jungle. The
task has been realized and met.
Now that we are in, we have to do our best to make that
which we are now an accepted part of a better society.
Better for us and better for the whole. Perhaps those with
their noses in the air toward Atheism will now begin to
realize that they have been keeping the "A" team out of the
ball game for too long.
In recognition of our success we have adopted a new
motto for the organization which was displayed on a banner
over the speakers' platform at our 13th National Annual
Convention held in April of this year in San Francisco,
California. The banner said "Unity Today, Power Tomorrow." We have the unity part down now, so on to the power.

the "humiliation" of removal of bible reading/prayer recitation from the public schools. At first, his solution was to go
his own way and find what anonymity he could in regular
employment - at more than arm's length from his family.
But at that distance he could not draw on the strength of the
family unit and, unfortunately, he did not have the fortitude
to stand alone.
As the years passed, he became unable to cope. He
publicly now tells a tale of drug and alcohol abuse, of
physical violence against those he loved, then - finally- of
identifying with the oppressor. It is now obvious that Billhas
been forced by the religious leaders who use him, to
psychologically lose his former perceptions of reality.
Grotesquely surrounded by his own abstract world of
fantasy, he can only be viewed now as a pitiful emotional
casualty of a hard fought war.
As the historic photo shows, there was happiness on the
faces of three jubilant dreamers in 1963, who thought that
freedom could really be something other than a dream. As
the remaining members of the family reach still toward that
reality, they can only realize that some survive, some
perish.

There are still three in the Murray-O'Hair family, Jon

Murray now the Director of the American Atheist Center,
Robin Murray-O'Hair, the daughter who Bill abandoned
along the way and who was adopted by her grandmother,
Madalyn Murray-O'Hair, who started it all.
Gerald Tholen

June, 1983

Page 7

The Murray Family during the Murray v. Curlett case, June, 1963.
from left to right:
Madalyn Murray, William Murray, Jon Murray.
Page 8

June, 1983

The American Atheist

MURRA Y v. CURLETT
No. 119. Argued February
*Together

27,1963.

Decided June 17, 1963.*

with No. 142, School District of Abington

Township, Pennsylvania,

v. Schempp, argued February

27-28, 1963.

In late 1959 the then Madalyn Murray beqaritne legal procedure which culminated in the case, the decision of which is
given below. She was protesting the reverential bible reading and the student unison prayer recitation in the homerooms
of public schools, while her son - an Atheist - was forced into solitary exile in the hallway. The case ended with the
highest court of the land agreeing with her position.
Yet, an act of pettiness accompanied the decision. Please note that the case of Murray v. Curlett is No. 119, since it was
received first in the U. S. Supreme Court and the argument proceeded on that case on February 27th. Later, a second
case came up from Pennsylvania, Abington Township v. Schempp, being No. 142 and the argument on that case followed
late in the afternoon of February 27th and the morning of February 28th. It is quite prestigious for anyone to have a
winning U. S. Supreme Court case, with one's name attached thereto. But, when the decision was issued by the court, it
was titled to the law books, 374 U.S. 203,83 S.Ct. 156, 10 L.Ed.2d. 844, with the name of Abington Townshipv. Schempp.
The first of these cases, after all, had to do with an Atheist and no Atheist could be permitted to have the honor.
The
pettiness was accentuated when Dr. O'Hair contacted the clerk of the U. S. Supreme Court and asked for a copy of the
tapes of the arguments she was told that they were only available (for a fee) to "scholars" and therefore she was denied.
OPINION OF THE COURT
MR. JUSTICE
Court.

CLARK

delivered

the opinion

of the

Once again we are called upon to consider t,Qescope of the

provision of the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution which declares that "Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof ... " These companion cases present
the issues in the context of state action requiring that schools
begin each day with readings from the bible. While raising
the basic questions under slightly different factual situations, the cases permit of joint treatment. In light of the
history of the First Amendment and of our cases interpreting and applying its requirements,
we hold that the
practices at issue and the laws requiring them are unconstitutional under the Establishment
Clause, as applied to the
States through the Fourteenth Amendment.

* * * * *
I.
No. 119. In 1905 the Board of School Commissioners of
Baltimore City adopted a rule pursuant to Art. 77, Section
202 of the Annotated Code of Maryland. The rule provided
for the holding of opening exercises in the schools of the city,
consisting primarily of the "reading, without comment, of a
chapter in the Holy Bible and/ or the use of the Lord's
Prayer." The petitioners, Mrs. Madalyn Murray and her
son, William J. Murray III, are both professed Atheists.
Following unsuccessful attempts to have the respondent
school board rescind the rule, this suit was filed for
mandamus to compel its rescission and cancellation. It was
alleged that William was a student in a public school of the
city and Mrs. Murray, his mother, was a taxpayer therein;
that it was the practice under the rule to have a reading on
each school morning from the king James version of the
bible; that at petitioners' insistence the rule was amended
(The rule as amended provides as follows:
"Opening Exercises. Each student, either collectively or in
classes, shall be opened by the reading, without comment, of
a chapter in the holy bible and! or the use of the lord's prayer.
The Douay version may be used by those pupils who prefer

Austin, Texas

it. Appropriate patriotic exercises should be held as a part of

the general opening exercise of the school or class. Any child
shall be excused from participating in the opening exercises
or from attending the opening exercises upon the written
request of his parent or guardian.'')
.

to permit children to be excused from the exercise on request

of the parent and that William had been excused pursuant
thereto; that nevertheless
the rule as amended was in
violation of the petitioners' rights "to freedom of religion
under the First and Fourteenth
Amendments"
and in
violation of "the principle of separation between church and
state, contained therein ... " The petition particularized the
petitioners' atheistic beliefs and stated that the rule, as
practiced, violated their rights
"in that it threatens their religious liberty by placing
a premium on belief as against non-belief and subjects
their freedom of conscience to the rule of the majority;
it pronounces belief in god as the source of all moral
and spiritual values, equating these values with religious values, and thereby renders sinister, alien and
suspect the beliefs and ideals of your petitioners,
promoting doubt and question of their morality, good
citizenship and good faith."
The respondents demurred and the trial court, recognizing that the demurrer admitted all facts well pleaded,
sustained it without leave to amend. The Maryland Court of
Appeals affirmed, the majority of four justices holding the
exercise not in violation of the First and Fourteenth
Amendments, with three justices dissenting. 228 Md. 239,
179 A. 2d 698. We granted certiorari.
II.
It is true that religion has been closely identified with our
history and government. As we said in Engel v. Vitale, 370
U.S. 421, 434 (1962), "The history of man is inseparable
from the history of religion. And ... since the beginning of
that history many people have devoutly believed that 'More
things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.'" In
June, 1983

Page 9

Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 313 (1952), we gave

specific recognition to the proposition
that "[ w]e are a
religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme
Being. "The fact that the founding fathers believed devotedly that there was a god and that the unalienable rights of man
were rooted in him is clearly evidenced in their writings,
from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution
itself.
This background
is evidenced today in our public life
through the continuance in our oaths of office from the
presidency to the alderman of the final supplication, "So
help me god." Likewise each house of the Congress provides
through its chaplain an opening prayer, and the sessions of
this court are declared open by the crier in a short ceremony,
the final phrase of which invokes the grace of god. Again,
there are such manifestations in our military forces. where
those of our citizens who are under the restrictions of
military service wish to engage in volunatary worship.
Indeed, only last year an official survey of the country
indicated that 64% of our people have church membership,
(Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department
of Commerce,
Statistical Abstract of the United States 83d ed. 1962,
48), while less than 3% profess no religion whatever. Id .. at
p. 46. It can be truly said, therefore, that today, as in the
beginning, our national life reflects a religious people who,
in the words of Madison, are "earnestly praying, as ... in
duty bound, that the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe ...
guide them into every measure which may be worthy of his
[blessing ....
J" Memorial and Remonstrance Against
Religious Assessments.
quoted in Everson v. Board of
Education, 330 U.S. 1,71-72 (1947).
This is not to say, however, that religion has been so
identified with our history and government that religious
freedom is not likewise as strongly imbedded in our public
and private life. Nothing but the most telling of personal
experiences in religious persecution suffered by our forebears, see Everson v. Board of Education. supra, at 8-11,
could have planted our belief in liberty of religious opinion
any more deeply in our heritage. It is true that this liberty
frequently was not realized by the colonists, but this is
readily accountable
by their close ties to the Mother
Country. However, the views of Madison and Jefferson,
preceded by Roger Williams, came to be incorporated not
only in the Federal Constitution
but likewise in those of
most of our States. This freedom to worship was indispensable in a country whose people came from the four quarters
of the earth and brought with them a diversity of religious
opinion. Today authorities list 83 separate religious bodies,
each with membership exceeding 50,000, existing among
our people, as well as innumerable smaller groups. Bureau
of the Census, op. cit . supra. at 46-47.
III.
Almost a hundred years ago in Minor v. Board of
Education of Cincinnati,judge
Alphonso Taft, father of the
revered Chief Justice, in an unpublished opinion stated the
ideal of our people as to religious freedom as one of
"absolute equality before the law, of all religious
opinions and sects ...
"The government is neutral, and, while protecting all,
it prefers none, and it disparages none."
Before examining this "neutra'l" position in which the
Establishment
and Free Exercise Clauses of the First
Page 10

June, 1983

Amendment place our government it is well that we discuss

the reach of the Amendment under the cases of this Court.
First, this Court has decisively settled that the First
Amendment's
mandate that "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof" has been made wholly applicable to
the States by the Fourteenth
Amendment.
Twenty three
years ago in Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, (1940),
this Court. through Mr. Justice Roberts, said:
"The fundamental concept of liberty embodied in that
(Fourteenth) Amendment embraces the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment
has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws ... "
In a series of cases since Cantwell the Court has repeatedly
reaffirmed that doctrine, and we do so now. Murdock v.
Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 108 (1943); Everson v, Board of
Education, supra: Illinois ex rel. McColum v. Board of
Education. 333 U.S. 203, 210-211 (1948); Zorach v. Clauson. supra; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961);
Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961); and Engel v.
Vitale. supra.
Second, this court has rejected unequivocally the contention that the Establishment
Clause forbids only governmental preference of one religion over another. Almost 20
years ago in Everson. supra, at 15, the Court said that
"[n]either a state nor the Federal Government can set up a
church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all
religions, or prefer one religion over another." And Mr.
Justice Jackson, dissenting, agreed:
"There is no answer to the proposition
... that the
effect of the religious freedom Amendment
to our
Constitution was to take every form of propagation of
religion out of the realm of things which could directly
or indirectly be made public business and thereby be
supported in whole or in part at taxpayersexpense
...
This freedom was first in the Bill of Rights because it
was first in the forefathers' minds; it was set forth in
absolute terms, and its strength is its rigidity." Id . at
26.
Further, Mr. Justice Rutledge, joined by Justices Frankfurter, Jackson and Burton, declared:
"The [First] Amendment's purpose was not to strike
merely at the official establishment
of a single sect,
creed or religion, outlawing only a formal relation
such as had prevailed in England and some of the
colonies. Necessarily it was to uproot all such relationships. But the object was broader than separating
church and state in this narrow sense. It was to create a
complete and permanent separation of the spheres of
religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for
religion." Id., at 31-32.
The same conclusion has been firmly maintained ever since
that time, see Illinois ex rei. McCollum, supra. at pp. 210211; McGowan v, Maryland. supra. at 442-443; Torcaso v.
Watkins. supra. at 492-493, 495, and we reaffirm it now.
While none of the parties to either of these cases has
questioned these basic conclusions of the Court, both of
which have been long established, recognized and consistentThe American Atheist

Iy reaffirmed, others continue to question their history, logic

and efficacy. Such contentions, in the light of the consistent
interpretations
in cases of this Court, seem entirely untenable and of value only as academic exercises.
IV.
The interrelationship
of the Establishment and the Free
Exercise Clause was first touched upon by Mr. Justice
Roberts for the Court in Cantwell v. Connecticut. supra, at
303-304, where it was said that their "inhibition of legislation" had
"a double aspect. On the one hand, it forestalls
compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or
the practice of any form of worship. Freedom of
conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious
organization or form of worship as the individual may
choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand,
it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of
religion. Thus the Amendment embraces two concepts
- freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is
absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot
be."
A half dozen years later in Everson v. Board of Education.
supra, at 14-15, this Court, through Mr. Justice Black,
stated that the "scope of the First Amendment ... was
designed forever to suppress" the establishment of religion
or the prohibition of the free exercise thereof. In short, the
Court held that the Amendment
"requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with
groups of religious believers and non-believers; it does
not require the state to be their adversary. State power
is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it
is to favor them." Id., at 18.
And Mr. Justice Jackson, in dissent, declared that public
schools are organized
"on the premise that secular education can be isolated
from all religious teaching so that the school can
inculcate all needed temporal knowledge and also
maintain a strict and lofty neutrality as to religion. The
assumption
is that after the individual has been
instructed in worldly wisdom he will be better fitted to
choose his religion." Id.. at 23-24.
Moreover, all of the four dissenters, speaking through Mr.
Justice Rutledge, agreed that
"Our constitutional
policy ... does not deny the
value or the necessity for religious training, teaching or
observance. Rather it secures their free exercise. But to
that end it does deny that the state can undertake or
sustain them in any form or degree. For this reason the
sphere of religious activity, as distinguished from the
secular intellectual liberties, has been given the twofold protection and, as the state cannot forbid, neither
can it perform or aid in performing the religious
function. The dual prohibition makes that function
altogether private." Id., at 52.
Only one year later the Court was asked to reconsider and
repudiate the doctrine of these cases in McCollum v. Board
of Education. It was argued that "historically the First
Amendment was intended to forbid only government preference of one religion over another .... In addition they ask
that we distinguish or overrule our holding in the Everson
case that the Fourteenth Amendment made the 'establishAustin, Texas

ment of religion' cia use of the First Amendment applicable

as a prohibition against the States." 333 U.S., at 211. The
Court, with Mr. Justice Reed alone dissenting, was unable
to "accept either of these contentions."
Ibid. Mr. Justice
Frankfurter,
joined by Justices Jackson,
Rutledge and
Burton, wrote a very comprehensive and scholarly concurrence in which he said that "[sjeparation is a requirement to
abstain from fusing functions
of Government
and of
religious sects, not merely to treat them all equally." Id . at
227. Continuing he stated that:
"the Constitution
...
prohibited the Government
common to all from becoming embroiled, however
innocently, in the destructive religious conflicts of
which the history of even this country records some
dark pages." Id.. at 228.
In 1952 in Zorach v. Clauson. supra, Mr. Justice Douglas
for the Court reiterated:
"There cannot be the slightest doubt that the First
Amendment reflects the philosophy that Church and
State should be separated. And so far as interference
with the 'free exercise' of religion and an 'establishment' of religion are concerned, the separation must be
complete and unequivocal.
The First Amendment
within the scope of its coverage permits no exception;
the prohibition
is absolute. The First Amendment,
however, does not say that in every and all respects
there shall be a separation
of Church and State.
Rather, it studiously defines the manner, the specific
ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or
dependency one on the other. That is the common
sense of the matter." 343 U.S., at 312.
And then in 1961 in McGowan v. Maryland and in
Torcaso v. Watkins each of these cases was discussed and
approved. Chief Justice Warren in McGowan, for a unanimous Court on this point, said:
"But, the First Amendment, in its final form, did not
simply bar a congressional enactment establishing a
church; it forbade allia ws respecting an establishment
of religion. Thus, this Court has given the Amendment
a 'broad interpretation ... in the light of its history and
the evils it was designed forever to suppress .... '" 366
U.S., at 441-442.
And Mr. Justice Black for the Court in Torcaso, without
dissent but with Justices Frankfurter and Harlan concurring
in the result, used this language:
"We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State
nor the Federal Government
can constitutionally
force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any
religion.' Neither can constitutionally
pass laws or
impose requirements which aid all religions as against
non-believers,
and neither can aid those religions
based on a belief in the existence of god as against
those religions founded on different beliefs." 367 U.S.,
at 495.
Finally, in Engel v. Vitale, only last year, these principles
were so universally recognized that the Court, without the
citation of a single case and over the sole dissent of Mr.
Justice Stewart, reaffirmed them. The Court found the 22word prayer used in "New York's program of daily classroom invocation of god's blessings as prescribed in the
Regents' prayer ... [to be] a religious activity." 370 U.S., at
424. It held that "it is no part of the business of government
to compose official prayers for any group of the American

June. 1983

Page 11

people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by

government."
Id., at 425. In discussing the reach of the
Establishment
and Free Exercise Clauses of the First
Amendment the Court said:
"Although these two clauses may in certain instances
overlap, they forbid two quite different kinds of
governmental encroachment upon religious freedom.
The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise
Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct
governmental
compulsion
and is violated by the
enactment of laws which establish an official religion
whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say, of
course, that laws officially prescribing a particular
form of religious worship do not involve coercion of
such individuals. When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon
religious- minorities to conform to the prevailing
officially approved religion is plain." Id., at 430-431.
And in further elaboration the Court found that the "first
and most immediate purpose [of the Establishment Cia use]
rested on the belief that a union of government. and religion
tends to destroy government and to degrade religion." Id., at
431. When government, the Court said, allies itself with one
particular form of religion, the inevitable result is that it
incurs "the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those
who held contrary beliefs." [bid.

v.
The wholesome "neutrality" of which this Court's cases
speak thus stems from a recognition of the teachings of
history that powerful sects or groups might bring about a
fusion of governmental and religious functions or a concert
or dependency of one upon the other to the end that official
support of the State or Federal Government
would be
placed behind the tenets of one or of all orthodoxies. This
the Establishment Clause prohibits. And a further reason
for neutrality is found in the Free Exercise Clause, which
recognizes the value of religious training, teaching and
observance and, more particularly, the right of every person
to freely choose his own course with reference thereto, free
of any compulsion from the state. This the Free Exercise
Clause guarantees. Thus, as we have seen, the two clauses
may overlap. As we have indicated, the Establishment
Clause has been directly considered by this Court eight times
in the past score of years and, with only one Justice
dissenting on the point, it has consistently held that the
clause withdrew all legislative power respecting religious'
belief or the expression thereof. The test may be stated as
follows: what are the purpose and the primary effect of the
enactment? If either is the advancement
or inhibition of
religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative
power as circumscribed by the Constitution. That is to say
that to withstand the strictures of the Establishment Clause
there must be a secular legislative purpose and a primary
effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Everson v.
Board of Education, supra; McGowan v. Maryland, supra,
at 442. The Free Exercise Clause, likewise considered many
times here, withdraws from legislative power, state and
federal, the exertion of any restraint on the free exercise of
religion. Its purpose is to secure religious liberty in the
Page 12

June, 1983

individual by prohibiting any invasions thereof by civil

authority. Hence it is necessary in a free exercise case for one
to show the coercive effect of the enactment as it operates
against him in the practice of his religion. The distinction
between the two clauses is apparent - a violation of the
Free Exercise Clause is predicated on coercion while the
Establishment Clause violation need not be so attended.
Applying the Establishment Clause principles to the cases
at bar we find that the States are requiring the selection and
reading at the opening of the school day of verses from the
holy bible and the recitation of the lord's prayer by the
students in unison. These exercises are prescribed as part of
the curricular activities of students who are required by law
to attend school. They are held in the school buildings under
the supervision and with the participation
of teachers
employed in those schools. None of these factors, other than
compulsory school attendance, was present in the program
upheld in Zorach v. Clauson. The trial court in No. 142 has
found that such an opening exercise is a religious ceremony
and was intended by the State to be so. We agree with the
trial court's finding as to the religious character of the
exercises. Given that finding, the exercises and the law
requiring them are in violation of the Establishment Clause.
There is no such specific finding as to the religious
character of the exercises in No. 119, and the State contends
(as does the State in No. 142) that the program is an effort to
extend its benefits to all public school children without
regard to their religious belief. Included within its secular
purposes, it says, are the promotion of moral values, the
contradiction
to the materialistic trends of our times, the
perpetuation of our institutions and the teaching of literature. The case came up on demurrer, of course, to a petition
which alleged that the uniform practice under the rule had
been to read from the king James version of the bible and
that the exercise was sectarian. The short answer, therefore,
is that the religious character of the exercise was admitted by
the State. But even if its purpose is not strictly religious, it is
sought to be accomplished
through readings, without
comment, from the bible. Surely the place of the bible as an
instrument of religion cannot be gainsaid, and the State's
recognition
of the pervading religious character of the
ceremony is evident from the rule's specific permission of the
alternative use of the catholic Douay version as well as the
recent amendment permitting nonattendance
at the exercises. None of these factors is consistent with the contention
that the bible is here used either as an instrument
for
nonreligious
moral inspiration or as a reference for the
teaching of secular subjects.
The conclusion follows that in both cases the laws require
religious exercises and such exercises are being cond ucted in
direct violation of the rights of the appellees and petitioners.
Nor are these required exercises mitigated by the fact that
individual students may absent themselves upon parental
request, for that fact furnishes no defense to a claim of
unconstitutionality
under the Establishment
Clause. See
Engel v. Vitale, supra, at 430. Further, it is no defense to
urge that the religious practices here may be relatively minor
encroachments
on the First Amendment.
The breach of
neutrality that is today a trickling stream may all too soon
become a raging torrent and, in the words of Madison, "it is
proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties."

Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, quoted in Everson, supra, at 65.
The American Atheist

It is insisted that unless these religious exercises are

permitted a "religion of secularism" is established in the
schools. We agree, of course, that the State may not
establish a "religion of secularism" in the sense of affirmmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus
"preferring those who believe in no religion over those Who
do believe." Zorach v. Clauson, supra, at 314. We do not
agree, however, that this decision in any sense has that
effect. In addition, it might well be said that one's education
is not complete without a study of comparative religion or
the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the bible is
worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities.
Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the
bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a
secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment. But the exercises here do
not fall into those categories. They are religious exercises,
required by the States in violation of the command of the
First Amendment
that the Government
maintain strict
neutrality, neither aiding nor opposing religion.
Finally, we cannot accept that the concept of neutrality,
which does not permit a State to require a religious exercise
even with the consent of the majority of those affected,
collides with the majority's right to free exercise of religion.
While the Free Exercise Clause clearly prohibits the use of
state action to deny the rights of free exercise to anyone, it
has never meant that a majority could use the machinery of
the State to practice its beliefs. Such a contention was
effectively answered by Mr. Justice Jackson for the Court in
West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624,
638(1943):
"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to
withdra w certain subjects from the vicissitudes of
political controversy, to place them beyond the reach
of majorities and officials and to establish them as
legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right
to ... freedom of worship ... and other fundamental
rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on
the outcome of no elections."
The place of religion in our society is an exalted one,
achieved through a long tradition of reliance on the home,
the church and the inviolable citadel of the individual heart
and mind. We have come to recognize through bitter
experience that it is not within the power of government to
invade that citadel, whether its purpose or effect be to aid or
oppose, to advance or retard. In the relationship between
man and religion, the State is firmly committed to a position
of neutrality. Though the application of that rule requires
interpretation of a delicate sort, the rule itself is clearly and
concisely stated in the words of the First Amendment.
Applying that rule to the facts of these cases, we affirm the
judgment in No. 142. In No. 119, the judgment is reversed
and the cause remanded to the Maryland Court of Appeals
for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

individual, the Establishment Clause, serving the same goal

of.individ ual religious freedom, is written in different terms.
Establishment
of a religion can be achieved in several
ways. The church and state can be one; the church may
control the state or the state may control the church; or the
relationship may take one of several possible forms of a
working arrangement between the two bodies. Under all of
these arrangements
the church typically has a place in the
state's budget, and church law usually governs such matters
as baptism, marriage, divorce and separation, at least for its
members and sometimes for the entire body politic. Education, too, is usually high on the priority list of church
interests. In the past, schools were often made the exclusive
responsibility of the church. Today in some state-church
countries the state runs the public schools, but ompulsory
religious exercises are often required of some or all students.
Thus, under the agreement Franco made with the holy See
when he came to power in Spain, "The Church regained its
place in the national budget. It insists on baptizing all
children and has made the catechism obligatory in state
schools. "
The vice of all such arrangements
under the Establishment Clause is that the state is lending its assistance to a
church's efforts to gain and keep adherents. Under the First
Amendment it is strictly a matter for the individual and his
church as to what church he will belong to and how much
support, in the way of belief, time, activity or money, he will
give to it. "This pure Religious Liberty" "declared ... [all
forms of church-state relationships] and their fundamental
idea to be oppressions of conscience and abridgments ofthat
liberty which God and nature had conferred on every living
soul."
In these cases we have no coercive religious exercise aimed
at making the students conform. The prayers announced are
not compulsory,
though some may think they have that
indirect effect because the nonconformist
student may be
induced to participate for fear of being called an "oddball."
But that coercion, if it be present, has not been shown; so the
vices of the present regimes are different.
These regimes violate the Establishment
Clause in two
different ways. In each case the State is conducting
a
religious exercise; and, as the Court holds, that cannot be
done without violating the "neutrality" required of the State
by the balance of power between individual, church and
state that has been struck by the First Amendment. But the
Establishment Clause is not limited to precluding the State
itself from cond ucting religious exercises. It also forbids the
State to employ its facilities or funds in a way that gives any
church, or all churches, greater strength in our society than
it would have by relying on its members alone. Thus, the
present regimes must fall under that clause for the additional
reason that public funds, though small in amount, are being
used to promote a religious exercise. Through the mechanism of the State, all of the people are being required to
finance a religious exercise that only some of the people
want and that violates the sensibilities of others.

Concurring Opinion of Justice Douglas

The most effective way to establish any institution is to

finance it; and this truth is reflected in the appeals by church
groups for public funds to finance their religious schools.

I join the opinion of the Court and add a few words in

explanation.
While the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment is
written in terms of what the State may not require of the

Financing a church either in its strictly religious activities or

in its other activities is equally unconstitutional,
as I
understand
the Establishment
Clause. Budgets for one
activity may be technically separable from budgets for

Austin, Texas

June, 1983

Page 13

others. But the institution is an inseparable whole, a living

organism, which is strengthened in proselytizing when it is
strengthened in any department by contributions from other
than its own members.
Such contributions may not be made by the State even in
a minor degree without violating the Establishment Clause.
It is not the amount of public funds expended; as this case

illustrates, it is the use to which public funds are put that is

controlling. For the First Amendment does not say that
some forms of establishment are allowed; it says that "no
law respecting an establishment of religion" shall be made.
What may not be done directly may not be done indirectly
lest the Establishment Clause become a mockery.

"In The Beginning

"

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

It was the 17th of June, 1963 and I sat in the livingroom of
my home watching the religious leaders of the nation being
interviewed on television about my case. It had ended. The
U. S. Supreme Court had, that day, rendered a decision on
it, in my favor. I had fought a lonely, long and bitter battle,
assaulted on all sides monetarily, emotionally, psychologically and physically. Yet, the religious leaders, all, now
testified that they had agreed in principle with this essential
case from its inception and that they felt that the U. S.
Supreme Court decision was correct: bible reading and
prayer recitation had been improperly in the public schools.
As I watched I thought of the remark of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton:
" ... you agree with me? Then, why, when I was
so hard pressed by foes on every side, did you
not come to the defense?"
No one came to interview me. No one cared. The
respectable, establishment, religions instead had their day
in the media, their week, their month, and to such an extent
I wondered why I had had to fight so long, so earnestly and
so alone.
Our home at 1526 Winford Rd., Baltimore, however was
not out of the memory of the religious in that city for we
were immediately under attack. The telephone never
stopped ringing with harrassment calls. Mail flooded in. We
hardly dared to go to the grocery store. Forays and assaults
continued, mounting in number and in intensity, while the
media ignored what went on. I could not understand it and
turned to my family members, "But I won. The U. S.
Supreme Court says I was right. I won. The religious
community didn't win. I did. Why are these nuts still
attacking us?"
I turned to Lou Alt, an old Atheist in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. I really had no one else. He had predicted that
not alone the populace of the city of Baltimore but the
pseudo-Atheist groups across the nation wouid hate me for
the victory. He thought I would be driven out of the culture
and unreceived by my own. He knew them and said that the
old male misogynist leaders of the "freethought groups"
would never permit a woman in a place of leadership. I
would either give the victory over to them, or I would be
attacked or ignored. Yet, true to his own word, he called me
the day after the Supreme Court decision. He had promised
to turn over his own small freethought organization and its
publication "The Free Humanist to me if I won. Cryptically
he had opined that I would "need something to keep me
going."
That something was - I soon found out - bread on the
table. I had been incredibly naive for I thought my employer
Page 14

June, 1983

would immediately see how wrong it had been to discharge

me and invite me back. I had been fired on the day I had
appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court and
the head of the agency had the message conveyed to me
that Iwas a disgrace to the City of Baltimore with my appeal
and the reason for the discharge was that I had not left "well
enough alone" with the adverse lower court decision. This
was seen as a disgrace to the City of Baltimore (my
employer) and the reason for my termination. However,
after my victory, Iwas told that there was now no hope that I
would be rehired.
I drove to Philadelphia, immediately. and Lou gave me a
healthy handful of names and addresses on 3" x 5" cards
and the balance of a checking account which contained
several hundred dollars. Then he filled up dad's Cadillac
with freethought books he had been selling and sat me
down for about two hours of information and advice. At the
end of that time, suddenly and almost as if by magic, I had
an Atheist organization, an Atheist book sales service and
an Atheist magazine.
At the time I had filed the suit, I had established
something I called "The Maryland Committee for Separation of State and Church." Actually, it was me. Scattered
across the nation, Atheists here and there had written to
encourage me and to contribute toward the legal fees of that
suit. And the "Maryland Committee" was precariously
maintained but, unfortunately, by no one in Maryland
except me. In Baltimore, such pressures and threats were
brought against persons who openly associated with me
that there was really no one in that city or state to whom I
could turn for either friendship or aid. For the three plus
years of the case I had been effectively isolated.
I began, then, a letter friendship with Atheists here and
there and for years I only knew them through correspondence. Even now when, often, I flip through envelopes
stacked to opened in the mail room, I still recognize the
penmanship of many of those old old friends.
Actually, I did not know what to do next, or how to do it.
But, by July 1st I had changed the name of Lou All's
magazine and became its editor. I called it, the "American
Atheist - A Voice of Reason." In the history of the world no
one had ever been so bold as to cheerfully and openly
embrace the word "Atheist" as the name of a magazine.
Undaunted, I did it. Then, I casually announced the
formation of a national group of Atheists, when - in fact - I
had been unable to even rally round sympathetic people in
Baltimore. At that time, there was one alleged state/church
separation group in the country (known as "Protestant and
Other Americans for Separation of Church and State.")
The American Atheist

Having had some dealings with the group during the

bible/prayer case when it adamantly refused to assist in any
way, while taking every bit of credit it could after the case
had been won, I defiantly charged that the group, POAU,
was merely a disguised Baptist organization hot on the
backs of the Roman Catholics. I would, therefore, form an
organization of those "other Americans," who were Atheists and neither welcome in nor assisted by such a
religious group. Five of us met in New York City to sign the
corporate papers and work out "Aims and Purposes." I
soon discovered that while others may be cajoled into
signing something, it is necessary for one person, up front,
to do all of the work, the composition, etc. So I did it.
Necessity is the mother of courage. One of the signers, in

whose home we met, backed out before we began and we

were left with myself and three others. The fourth, also,
frightened by publicity pulled out within a week. Carl Brown
of Kansas, Gustav Broukal of Iowa and I hung in there and
together we declared "Other Americans" to be our corporation. We could find no lawyer to assist and so, again, I simply
drew up what legal papers were necessary and the deed was
done. Carl went back to Kansas, Gus to Iowa and I was on
my way to traverse the road from 1963 to 1983, where I am
now 20 years later. But, with these few deeds, your
American Atheists had begun. The first 20 years are the
hardest. And, one day I willwrite the story of it all. But, the
most important part is always the beginning. And, this is
how that was.

DIAL AN ATHEIST

DIAL-AN-A THEIST

CHAPTERS OF AMERICAN A THEISTS

DIAL- TH E-ATH EIST

(512) 458-5731

Tucson, Arizona

(602) 623-3861

Phoenix, Arizona

s.

Francisco, California

Northern New Jersey

(201) 777~01'66

(602) 267-0777

Albuquerque, New Mexico

(505) 884-7630

(415) 974-1750

Schenectady, New York

(518) 346-1479

Denver, Colorado

(303) 692-9395

Charlotte, North Carolina

(704) 568-5346

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

(305) 584-8923

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

(405) 677-4141

Tampa Bay, Florida

(813) 577-7154

Portland, Oregon

(503) 287-6461

Atlanta, Georgia

(404) 329-9809

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

(215) 533-1620

Chicago, Illinois

(312) 772-8822

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

(412) 734-0509

Evansville, Indiana

(812) 425-1949

Houston, Texas

(713) 664-7678

Lexington, Kentucky

(606) 278-8333

Salt Lake City, Utah

(801) 364-4939

Boston, Massachusetts

(617) 969-2682

Lynchburg, Virginia

(804) 993-2525

Detroit, Michigan

(313) 721-6630

Northern Virginia

(703) 370-5255

Eastern Missouri

(314) 771-8894

Virginia Beach, Virginia

(804) 428-0979

Reno, Nevada
Austin, Texas

(702) 972-8203
June, 1983

Page 15

RELIGIOUS PACIFISM AND THE DRAFT

Reprinted from the GALA (Gay Atheist League of America) Review, September, 1980
Jeffrey Vowles was a featured speaker at the 13th Annual National Convention
By the second week in August, 1980, an estimated four
million 18 and 19 year old American males will have been
required under legislation recently passed by Congress (HR
4060) to register for the draft. While it is up to the Supreme
Court in the Fall term to say whether Congress will
ultimately have to include females in the registration, failure
to comply with the statute as presently worded is a felony
with penalties of up to five years in prison and a fine of ten
thousand dollars. A study, prepared by the Air Force
Reserve Officer Major Don Guritz, has suggested that more
than half of the male registrants will profess opposition to
war and seek the status of conscientious objectors, (AP,
March 28). One of the largest quaker organizations in
America, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, has
already announced that its Peace Committee would "assist
those who feel led to witness to our opposition." The United
Church of Christ (christian and congregational) seems to
be following suit (UPI, July 4) and a national Committee
Against Registration and the Draft (CARD) has been
formed under the leadership of the reverend Barry Lynn.
(UPI, July 12).
This rush of certain religious organizations and leaders to
oppose conscription may well excite the suspicion of
Atheists. Unbelievers might take a closer look at the draft
and ask themselves: First - if sufficient numbers of skilled
petty officers can neither be recruited nor retained at
present military pay and benefit levels, how will this
deficiency be remedied by bringing untrained draftees into
the armed forces? Is there some purpose other than
providing manpower for defense behind conscription?;
Second - why do religious leaders and organizations seem
anxious to support conscientious objection among the
youth? Does theological opposition to the war in the form of
conscientious objection support the enforcement of peace
or does it rather hinder efforts to ban aggression?
An examination of religious pacifism and the draft by Gay
Atheists in the United States would seem all the more
advisable because Americans and English are relative
strangers to conscription. From 1066 when William the
Conqueror promised that no Englishman would ever be
required to serve in the Feudal Army or compelled to fight in
a foreign war, Anglo-Saxons have imagined military service
only in the context of participation in a home guard, a
temporary force of citizens joined together to protect their'
own property and lives from foreign aggression - an
institution of defensive and circumstantial character known
as the Fyrd. While the United States Congress, acting
under authority of the "war powers," Article 1, section 8, of
the U.S. Constitution, did impose conscription during the
Civil and World Wars, the English only became acquainted
with it after 1914 and the passage of the Defence of the
Realm Act.
On the European continent, however, conscription has
been a tradition since the French revolution. Even those
countries preserving a monarchial form of government
were quick to follow the example of the French Republic in
the use of compulsion in recruiting. Citizenship itself came
Page 16

June, 1983

by Jeffrey Vowles
to be defined in terms of an obligation to render military
service (Article 1, loi Jourdan, 1798), and refusal to comply
for any other reason than physical disability was considered
desertion.
Today, almost all the countries of Western Europe have a
conscientious objector statute of some kind whereby
pacifists or war resisters may be permitted to perform
alternative civilian service in place of the military obligation.
In France, an applicant for conscientious objector status
must appear before a board (Tribunal permanent des
forces armees) primarily composed of serving officers who
weigh the sincerity of the religious or philosophic beliefs
professed. (Articles 41-50, Code du Service national, loi
71-424). But in France, the alternative civilian service is
twice the length of the military obligation and during its
performance, the conscientious objector is forbidden to
attend any political or trade union meetings, to express any
opinion in public concerning political or diplomatic questions without prior authorization of the Defense Minister, or
to engage in any work stoppage or job action. (Articles 7-8,
Decret 27-805 known as the Brigancon Decree)

"The term 'religion' has actually been

defined in the Selective Service Act of
1948 as: 'an individual's belief in a relation
to a supreme being involving duties superior to those arising from any human
relation, but does not include essentially
political, sociological, or philosophical
views or a merely personal moral code.'"
In the United States, exemption from the draft has been
allowed for any person who:
". . . by reason of religious training and belief is
conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any
form." (Selective Service Act of 1940, Section 5j)
The term "religion" has actually been defined in the
Selective Service Act of 1948 as:
" ... an individual's belief in a relation to a supreme
being involving duties superior to those arising from
any human relation, but does not include essentially
political, sociological, or philosophical views or a
merely personal moral code." (Section 6j, see also
Military Selective Service Act of 1967 as amended).
What a review of draft laws and the procedures for
recognition of conscientious objections as grounds for
exemption does not reveal, however, is the impact of
The American Atheist

technology on the art of war. A modern armed force, like

any other industry, depends on highly skilled labor. The
pattern which has been emerging in Western Europe is that
of a token draft, six to twelve months, with the military
increasingly manned by long-term professionals. While the
nation-at-arms remains an article of political faith in France,
mercenaries now outnumber conscripts. Whole age groups
of young Frenchmen have escaped their draft obligation
simply because the Army could find no place for them to
train, no equipment for them to use.
If the gap between the practice of conscription and the
actual or objective manpower requirements of a defense
force is becoming wider and increasingly obvious, then why
might the United States again be resorting to compulsion in
recruiting in 1980? The question is all the more pertinent
since only ten years ago a blue ribbon panel of civilian and
military experts, the Gates Commission, virtually declared
the draft unconstitutional. Convened in 1969 as the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, the
Gates Commission found that conscription represented a
tax-in-kind, an imposition of regressive character, enabling
the majority to discriminate against a minority, i.e. the
young males. The commissioners also concluded that
conscription inevitably operates as a concealment of costs,
suggesting in the following language that:;
"... part of the cost of armed forces is hidden when
there is a draft. The explicit costs of using military
forces are underestimated, with the result that decisions to use the armed forces are made which perhaps
would not be made if the true costs were known."
(The Report of the President's Commission on an
All-Volunteer Armed Force, U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1970, p. 156).
Infinite speculation is possible on the motives behind
reimposition of draft registration by the United States
government in 1980. What the Gates Commission established in its 1970 report, perhaps more clearly and with
greater authority than ever before in America, is that
conscription has always been, by its very nature, dishonest
and underhanded.
For Atheists, the more intriguing question is what are
churches and the clergy actually doing when they urge
young people to profess opposition to war through conscientious objection? Has religious pacifism ever succeeded
in preventing aggression? Is the conscientious objector
statute any less a misrepresentation than the conscription
which it modifies?
Religious leaders in America and elsewhere have long
advertised peace as one of their primary benefits. The
jewish messiah was described by the first Isaiah as "The
Prince of Peace." (Is. 9:6). Prayers to end war and conflict
are offered more regularly in churches and synagogues than
perhaps any other part of the liturgy. "Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of god"
are words attributed to the rabbi jesus in the synoptic
gospel of Matthew, (5:9). Since the Fourth Century judeochristianity has been the official religion of the Western
world, for nearly two thousand years the torah/pentateuch
has served as the basic code of conduct for occidental man,
yet Mr. Justice Jackson was obliged to describe the
Nuremberg proceedings of 1945-46 as "the first trial in
history for crimes against the peace." It would seem, then,
that the peace proclaimed by religious leaders has little to
Austin, Texas

do with law and justice, it would appear that the religious

concept of right and wrong has no connection with the
deliberations of magistrates and juries.
Probably no one is better qualified to discern and
comment on a link between war and religion than the
English historian and tank-warfare strategist, MajorGeneral J.C.F. "Boney" Fuller, 1889-1966. In his work The
Decisive Battles 0/ the Western World, Fuller writes:
"War was not prohibited, nor were attempts made to
abolish it, because it was recognized as part of man's
very nature, the fruit of original sin, which was the
fulcrum of the church's power." (paladin, 1972, Vol. I,
page 244)
Atheists in 1980 may need no further convincing to doubt
the sincerity of clergy who loudly and incessantly offer
prayers for peace. However, if adherents are to be brought
into the circle of unbelief, especially from those of conscription age, a thorough analysis of religious pacifism would
seem to be required. The following willattempt to show how
conscientious objection actually supports the war system
which the Allied judges at Nuremberg sought to abolish.
While the prevalence of war in the Western world
alongside an established religion venerating a "Prince of
Peace" might seem paradoxical, a key to understanding can
be found in the common law prescription for the legitimate
use of force. English law makes a distinction between
justified violence, i.e. that used to defend oneself or one's
rightful property and unjustified or unnecessary force, i.e.
aggression. Most importantly, common law does not distinguish between persons nor take account of the rank or
position of anyone who uses force. As the eminent British
authority on constitutional law AV. Dicey explains:
"Officers, magistrates, soldiers, policemen, ordinary
citizens, all of them, bound to withstand and put down
breaches of the peace, such as riots and other
disturbances; they are each and all of them, authorized to employ so much force, even to the taking of
life, as may be necessary for that purpose, they are
none of them entitled to use more; they are, each and
all of them, liable to be called to account before a jury
for the use of excessive, that is, of unnecessary force;"
(Law 0/ the Constitution, MacMillan, 9th Edition,
1941, page 289)
From the above it may seem that the decalogue's "Thou
shalt not kill" and Matthew 5:39's "resist not evil but
whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him
the other also," while perhaps comprising the stuff of poetry
or even serving certain political ends, in no way reflects the
citizen's duty to defend himself and to assist others in
putting down breaches of peace. Professor Dicey reminds
us that resignation, non-violence, and other pacifist positions are not acceptable in the eye of the law when
aggression is taking place. When innocent persons are
being assaulted or otherwise victimized, there is a judicially
recognized mandate that anyone who can render assistance to do so "even to the taking of life."
This may seem somewhat legalistic or just a bit theoretical but it was the very position taken by the United States in
June of 1940 when requested by the United Kingdom for
assistance in the war against nazi Germany: Without relying
on the common law proscription of aggression and the legal
duty of all citizens to succor the victims of violent crime,
U.S. officials could not have extended bases and warships

June, 1983

Page 17

to a belligerent 18 months before Pearl Harbor without

jeopardizing or relinquishing American rights as a neutral.
Because of the position taken in June of 1940to justify Lend
Lease, the United States was obliged to try the nazi leaders
in 1945 as "war criminals," that is, to hold them individually
responsible for "crimes against the peace and preparation,
initiation, and waging of wars of aggression."

legislating for the members of the armed forces in a manner

which would be "impermissible" for ordinary citizens.
(Parker v. Levy, supra at 760) Where the Supreme Court
errs, however, is in ignoring the fact that historically
common law courts in England always refused to enforce
the Articles of War unless their issuance happened to
coincide with circumstances requiring an active defense

"Draft registration in 1980 would appear to confer uncontestable standing on ...

young men ... to invalidate the 'war powers' and to enforce the ban on aggression
issued at Nuremberg .... But what happens if there is conscientious objection? ...
The young man loses his standing, he is no longer personally motivated to sue and he
is coopted."
That the Allied judges at Nuremberg had to disestablish a
whole tradition of so-called "international law," that they
had to invalidate what had become known as "military law"
by disallowing superior orders as a defense only demonstrated for how long and to what extent the Hebraic
concept of right as submission to authority had permeated
Western thought. European jurists were astounded at
Nuremberg, the entire proceedings were denounced as
illegal by the English lord chancellor, viscount Maugham
(brother of Somerset), and Dr. Jarreiss, counsel for Defendant Jodi, wailed that the trials effectively exploded the
whole concept of national sovereignty, the very idea of the
state as a super-person. (see Trial of the Major War
Criminals Beiore the International Military Tribunal, Allied
Control Authority for Germany, Nuremberg, 1947, Vol. 17,
page 478, also U.N.O. and War Crimes, viscount Maugham, John Murray, London, 1951) But the United States
government was bound to uphold its position of June 1940
and the individual responsibility/ban on aggressive warfare
came to be accepted by the United Nations in the Codification of International Law by the International Law Commission and adopted by the General Assembly in 1946.
(Resolution 95)

such as the imminent threat of invasion. (see Part 2, Section

1, "The History of Military Law" Manual of Military Law,
9th Edition, her majesty's Stationery Office, 1969)
From the above it may be seen that not only draft
registration but also the entire Uniform Code of Military
Justice in addition to all the other United States statutes
based on the "war powers" are vulnerable to legal challenge
both on the basis of common law precedent and as contrary
to the force of international agreements. No American
court can ultimately base its ruling on the authority of the
British Parliament under lord Essex in 1642. No American
court can totally repudiate the Nuremberg Judgment and
the Principles of International Law based thereon. Yet no
challenge may be mounted to the regime of "war powers"
and command prerogatives without standing, that is, without the plaintiff's personally being liable for harm if the
statute is enforced.
Draft registration in 1980 would appear to confer uncontestable standing on upwards of four million young men;
legal standing to invalidate the "war powers" and to enforce
the ban on aggression issued at Nuremberg. None the less
important, some four million young men would also acquire
a strong personal motive for submitting their cause to

"(Withconscientious objection) Ifbefore (the young man) was a dissident, now he has
an important stake in the status quo. Ifbefore he was an unbeliever, now he has made
a public profession of some form or degree of religious faith."
How does the foregoing discussion of common law and
the Nuremberg Judgment relate to the passage by Congress of HR 4060 requiring four million 18- and 19-year old
males to have registered for the draft by the seoond week of
August? The constitutional underpinning for American,
legislation imposing compulsion in recruiting has always
been those provisions of the U.S. Constitution known as
the "war powers" of Congress, Article I, Section 8, and the
command prerogatives of the President, Article II, Section
2; said powers being identified by the Supreme Court as
derived from the British Articles or Ordinance of War, first
issued by the crown and later by Parliament under lord
Essex in 1642. (Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733 at 743, Mr.
Justice Rehnquist) These "war powers" function as a sort of
blank check and the American courts do not normally
review their exercise. The Supreme Court has even gone so
far as to say that Congress may do what the common law
always forbid, that is, to distinguish between persons by
Page 18

June, 1983

litigation. But what happens if there is conscientious

objection; what occurs to the young American male who is
persuaded or assisted by the Peace Committee of the
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends or by reverend
Barry Lynn's Committee Against Registration and the Draft
to become a conscientious objector, to register officially as
a person:
" ... who by reason of religious training and belief is
conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any
form. (Military Selective Service Act of 1967 as
amended, Section 6j)
The answer is obvious. The young man loses his standing, he is no longer personally motivated to sue and he is
coopted, that is, he participates in the "war system" joining
the government in the exercise of its "war powers" just as if
he had donned the uniform and taken up arms. If before he
was a dissident, now he has an important stake in the status
Cont'd

on pg.46

The American Atheist

PHYSICIAN PRESCRIBES ATHEISM

FOR HIMSELF
by P.J. Budahn
Reprinted

with permission from the Newport News (Virginia) Times-Herald, 3/21/83

Dr. Lawrence Young

The doctor has a problem. Diagnosis isn't any easier for a
physician with a personal dilemma.
"I have an obligation. There's a burning desire to speak
out," says Dr. Lawrence D. Young, leaning back in a chair
inside his East End office. But how loudly should he speak
out, knowing he may face social and economic reprisal?
His dinner lies in crumpled tinfoil on his desk. The clock
on the wall and the refrigerator in the corner hum off-tempo.
The doctor is considering his prescription.
"Your motivations are interpreted by everyone. I'd rather
take the long, slow road than precipitate any antagonism."
Young, a Phoebus native who is in his late 40s, rests his
head in his hand. He has the compact, sturdy body of a
football running back and jeweler's hands. But the voice is
all physician, with assurance in each soft-spoken syllable
and precision in every long pause.
Eventually, he opts for action. He must help "the people
who are afflicted with believing." He must take a public
stand.
"All religions are wrong," declares Young. "All religions
are harmful."
Young is a member of a small group of Atheists who
banded together last fall in Tidewater. The members, who
do not believe in god but say they accept the supremacy of
reason, are part of a larger, national group called American
Atheists.
The nationwide group was founded in 1963 by Madalyn
Murray O'Hair, who led the successful court challenge two
decades ago to prayer in public schools.
Raised in a devout baptist family, Young considered
joining the ministry as a youngster. Then, when he was in
Phenix High School, he read a series of articles about
different religions in Time magazine.
"I got to thinking that being a baptist because my parents
were baptists wasn't really rational. I decided to choose
which religion was best for me," he says.
Austin, Texas

"As I studied, I saw they all seemed to have their faults. I

became totally confused. Gradually, I began to feel that no
one (of them) was good."
His medical practice strengthened his view. He says he
has had patients whose main problem was feeling bad after
their ministers condemned such things as lipstick, modest
drinking or enjoyable sex.
"I've treated some patients just by asking them not to
attend certain churches that were guilt-inflicting," he says.
Where religion has failed mankind, he charges, is in not
keeping up with changes in sociology and psychology.
Advances in these sciences have illuminated new areas of
human behavior, while most "religionists" base their insights on a patchwork of biblical phrases.
"The bible utilizes the wisdom of 2000 years ago," Young
says. "It's not satisfactory today for what we need."
In place of the "Ten Commandments," he advocates an
ethical code based on scientific discoveries about human
nature and on accumulated human experience.
"Mother Nature and Father Time - natural influences
along with the wisdom of the ages," he calls it. "That's what
we need to improve our lives."
Young says he's told a few patients about his Atheism.
They've said his personal ideas about religion don't matter
to them. Still, he thinks he'll lose some patients.
"They would make room for patients who could accept
my views or my right to have them," he says.
Reprisals and ostracism always hover around the edge of
an Atheist's life.Until finding the local Atheist group, Young
says he had to travel to New York or Washington to talk
with a like-minded person.
"It can be lonely being an Atheist," says Deborah Clark,
33, director of the Tidewater Chapter of American Atheists
in Virginia Beach.
Ms. Clark, a naval petty officer at the Dam Neck Training
Center, says the need for friendships among Atheists was
one of the driving forces behind the founding of the local
group last September.
"It's a whole new world to go to an Atheist's (social) party,
find people who don't believe and quit worrying about
offending someone," she says.
Being heard is the immediate aim of the group. In the last
two weeks, members have spoken about the Atheist
viewpoint on a local television talk show and to classes at
two local colleges.
"It's a tragedy that people don't value their lives," says
Ms. Clark, who was raised in the catholic church. "They're
looking forward for something that doesn't exist. They're
devaluing the earth."
The Tidewater Chapter has enlisted eight "known"
members in its seven months of existence. Ms. Clark makes
the distinction because others may have joined directly with
the national headquarters in Austin, Texas.
"People are going to take a while affiliating with any
organization," Ms. Clark says. "And Atheists tend not to be
joiners."
~

June, 1983

Page 19

/
/

v
v
V

v
v

v'

v
It'

The 13th Annual National American Atheist Convention

was held in San Francisco, California, on April 1st, 1983,
with the San Francisco Chapter of American Atheists
acting as host. Very careful pre-convention planning was
done by Minerva Massen, the Chapter Director and her
able husband, Jack Barry Gantt provided excellent preconvention media coverage. Madalyn O'Hair arrived in San
Francisco a week ahead of time and the trio managed to
keep her busy being interviewed by both the hard and the
electronic media for the entire week, plus a speech at the
University of California (at Berkeley) Law School and Marin
Community College.
The outstanding accomplishment was to have Mayor
Feinstein declare the opening date of the Convention to be
"James Lick Day" in commemoration of that great Freethinker who gave Lick Observatory to the world. Of course,
the word "freethinker" in his day and age was a euphemism
for Atheism. In mid-morning, April 1st, a group of early
Atheist conventioners laid a memorial wreath on the
Pioneer Statute which he had erected, fortuitously across
the street from the convention hotel,
Again, the spokespersons were outstanding and more
and more often this is the case. Naturally there were
awards: Harold Church received the Atheist of The Year
Award for having been the principal litigant in the case
which removed from the Constitution of the State of
Tennessee that (1) one must have a belief in a system of
Page 20

June,

1983

future rewards and punishments and (2) a belief in God in

order to hold office or public trust in Tennessee. The
Pioneer Award went to Andrew Vena of Philadelphia, who
assisted in the holding together of an old freethought
organization in that city. Mary Bobone of Rochester, New
York received an Outstanding Director award. You all
know Bob Fenn of Denver, Colorado, who does American
Atheist plastic picket signs and bumper stickers. For his
innovative activities in this craft, he received an Outstanding Member Award. From the same city, Bill Talley took
home a Meritorious Award for his formation of AAARG
(American Atheists Alcoholic Recover Group.) Barry
Gantt received an Outstanding Service Award for seeing
to it that there was pre-Convention publicity. Arnold Via
took his awards for having established PALA (prison
Atheist League of America) and the first American Atheist
Cemetery.
After each Convention we regale the event with pictures
of the outstanding events in the next issue of this magazine.
However, this year the film that was purchased, fresh, just
days before the Convention turned out to be bad; only
several pictures came out. Therefore, in the following
pages, you will find mostly pictures of our Australian
Convention speaker's tour of Western Chapters along with
a very few not-too-good pictures from the Convention.
Forgive us our trespasses; we will do better next time.
The American Atheist

Mark and Jon tape an American Atheist Forum cable-TV show in Austin for
broadcast on one of thirteen outlets around the country.

Mark visits the "oldest house in the USA" in

Santa Fe, New Mexico on the way to a
rendezvous with the Albuquerque Chapter.

Mark topped off with a "ten gallon hat"

- where else but in the Cowboy Hall of Fame
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Trapped by the lure of the "slots" Mark feeds in a nickel in
Reno, Nevada as Jon, camera in hand, catches him in the
act.

Jon Murray, AA Center Director,

addresses convention.

,.
Derek Humphrey of the Hemlock Society
speaks on voluntary euthanasia.

Joyce Rosenfield speaks on "Our Religious

Roots."

Dr. O'Hair gives meritorious service award to San

Francisco Chapter Vice Director Barry Gantt.

Conventioneers gather for a presentation.

Some 400 came during the 3-day weekend.

A convention business meeting gets under way with (from left to right, front row) Toivo Helin,
Wisconsin; Merrill Holste, Albuquerque; Virginia and Shirley Nelson, Arkansas; (back row) Scott
Kerns, Houston; and Rey Bourquin, Pittsburgh.

Bill Talley, Denver Chapter Director,

reports on A.A.A.R.G. (American
Atheist Alcoholics Recovery Group).

Gloria Tholen of the AA Center staff sells a meal ticket

while Shirley Nelson of Arkansas looks on.

Robin Murray O'Hair, Director

Library and Archives, gives convi

c. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, President and founder of American Atheists, addresses the

convention with a banner sporting our new corporate motto overhead.

Minerva Massen, member of the

and Director of the San Francisco
tioneers to "the cit

Ellen Mardan, former director of the San Diego

Chapter, gives a little Atheist history lesson.

Dr. O'Hair presents the Atheist-of-theYear Award to Harold Church (not

shown), Tennessee State Director, for his
legal activities while Terry and Marti Fry
look on.

Some of the many G.A.L.A. (Gay Athe

attended the convention, with Dorc
Francisco Chapter, seated far right.

The "Ladies Against Women" present dramatic

satire at one of the nightly parties.

t League of America) members who

hy Harten, Secretary of the San

Conventioneers

Jeffrey Vowles, National President of Gay

Atheist League of America, addressed the
convention on "Religious Pacifism &
Disarmament. "

enjoy Sunday brunch at the hotel, especially David Chris Allen, Utah Chapter
Director, who found the repast "finger-licking good."

KUED TV-7 crew prepares the AA Center van for

a remote taping of Jon and Mark rolling into Utah
just outside the state line at Wendover, Utah.

(Below)
Dr. O'Hair and Mark prepare
for a taping of an American
Atheist Forum show at Cable
Access studios in Austin.

t1"

Mark (center, without skis) gets a

birds-eye view of Salt Lake City from
the Il,OOO-footpeak at Snowbird ski
resort.

After an introduction taped remote en-route, Jon defends the

founding fathers' separationist views on KUED's "Civic Dialogue."

Jon Murray stands by for

cue on a midday news spot
in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma.

Associated Student Atheists table at University of Utah in Salt Lake City outside lecture hall where
students gathered to hear Jon Murray and Mark Plummer, President of Australian Humanists.

Mark Plummer stops for an

"Aussie-beer" with host,
producer and camera man
of the "Civic Dialogue"
program on KUED-TV
public channel 7 in Salt
Lake City, on a remote
taping set up 150 miles
outside of Salt Lake City.

(On the left)

Mark Plummer gets
introduced to religion
American-style in
downtown Denver. "We
have nothing like that in
Australia," he said of the
billboard.

(Below)
Mark and Jon respond on
TV 20's "Weekday" with
sympathetic
host Craig
Clyde in Salt Lake City.

Mark tackles the slopes in Utah.

(Above)

(On the right)

A touch of the old West for Mark
in Virginia City, Nevada just
down the road from the
Ponderosa.

THE STATE AID DRAIN

Address to the 13th Annual National Convention
of American Atheists
by Mark Plummer
LL.B., B. Juris, r.r.r.c.
National President
of

Australian Humanists

Before looking at the issue of state aid to private schools

in Australia, it may be well to establish some relativity
between our two countries. There is a huge disparity in the
distribution of population. In round figures the area of
Australia is equal to about 83%of that of the United States,
but its population is only 7%(15 million)of that of the United
States (220 million). More than half of our 15 million is
contained in three large eastern seaboard cities (Sydney
and Melbourne - 3 million each; Brisbane - 1 million).
Both countries have a federal government, but Australia
is divided into six states. The states formed into a Federation, or Commonwealth, in 1901.
From 1901 to 1963 there was no direct government aid to
private schools. The school system in Australia developed
with 75-81% of students attending government schools
administered through State Government Education Departments, and 19-25%of students attending private schools.
In 1962 about 95%of the private schools were conducted
by religious organizations, and about 87% of these religious
schools were catholic schools. The other 13% of private
schools were largely wealthy and privileged schools for the
sons and daughters of the protestant elite.

Now, in 1983, a mere twenty years later, enrollments in

private schools are on the increase while enrollments in
government schools are on the decrease. Government
funding for private schools has reached the billion dollar
mark.
Supposedly "independent" private schools which twenty
years ago received not one cent in federal aid now receive at
least 40%, mostly 60% and even up to 90% of their running
costs from taxpayers' funds.
What happened?
It all seems to have started in the toilets of "Our Lady of
Mercy Catholic Preparatory School" in Goulbourn, a
provincial city 1PO miles south of Sydney!
In 1962 the state government said the toilets at the school
had to be improved. The parish claimed it could not afford

"Supposedly 'independent' private schools which twenty years ago received not
one cent in federal aid now receive at least 40%,mostly 60%and even up to 90%of
their running costs from taxpayers' funds."
In 1963 enrollments in Australian private schools were on
the decrease. There was expansion in the number of
students attending government schools. The catholic
schools were in crisis. They were suffering the loss of unpaid
religious teachers due to the exodus of nuns and priests
from the church, and the drying up of recruits to the
teaching orders. The new lay teachers being recruited to
replace the religious. faithful had to be paid full wages. The
catholic hierarchy was considering closing primary schools
(the Australian equivalent to elementary schools of the
U.S.) and keeping separate secondary (or high) schools
only. Indeed, one catholic educationist suggested the
closure of all catholic schools and the use of the resources
for Sunday schools, but he was promptly dispatched to
become an assistant parish priest at a tiny country town.
Austin, Texas

the cost and sent the parish's 2,000 catholic students en

masse to enroll at the government schools in the city. Only
640 could be enrolled. When the strike ended, many
catholic parents had found state education to be to their
liking and kept their children at the state schools. It was the
first major confrontation over state aid and escalated to a
massive public debate over government imposed restrictions on private schools, and the financing of those schools.
The debate and the lobbying for state-aid funds had its
effect on the then Prime Minister of Australia, Robert
Menzies.
At that time the Menzies' government was a coalition of
the Liberal and Country (conservative) Parties. They had a
one seat majority over the opposition Labor Party in the
House of Representatives (equivalent to the U.S. House of

June, 1983

Page 29

Representatives) .
Under our Westminster system of government Menzies
could have lost power with the death or defection of one
member of government. He seized on the issue of state aid
for parochial schools as a vote winner among the catholics,
and decided to give federal government funds for the
building of science buildings in private schools.

I
N

.----- I

:::::J

~.
He had been lobbied by the science community who were
concerned about the state of science education in Australian schools in the wake of the '57 Soviet space launch.
From the lobbying efforts of scientists came federal government support to religious systems which have had a long
history of opposing progress in science.
Menzies won the '63 election handsomely. He won the
next election in '66. For the next election in '69 he promised
federal funding for private secondary school libraries. He
won the '69 election, and then, in '69'70, grants to private
schools were introduced - $35/capita for primary and
$50/capita for secondary schools. Prior to the '72 election
these grants were increased to $50 and $68 respectively.
This was not enough for the private schools and the
priestly class, who wanted more and more of their costs
paid for by the state. By this time opposition was growing to
the funding of private schools, and in '69 anti-state aid
groups formed the Council for the Defence of Government
Schools, popularly known as DOGS. They wanted the
ending of state aid to parochial schools.
By '71 the DOGS group had decided to challenge in the
High Court of Australia the constitutionality of the federal
funding to religious schools. Our High Court is equivalent to '
the U.S.'s Supreme Court. The Australian Constitution
contains a clause, Section 116, which is similar to the U.S.'s
First Amendment. Section 116 reads:
"The Commonwealth (of Australia) shall not make
any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing
any religious observances, or for prohibiting the free
exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be
required as a qualification for any office or public trust
under the Commonwealth."
Next, in 1972, came a promise from the government to
federally fund non-government schools' recurrent costs
which, in '73, would be equivalent to 20% of the assessed
Page 30

June, 1983

Australia-wide cost of educating a child at a government

school. The state governments were also by now contributing.
Late in '72 came a change of government, with the Labor
Party winning the federal election. The Labor Party is a
left-wing, social-democrat party, and was not happy about
assisting the private schools of the elite, However, they
needed the catholic vote to achieve power, and had been
elected with a policy of allocating federal funds to private
schools on a "needs" basis, with the goal of raising all
schools to an acceptable standard, and providing equal
opportunity to all children. The majority of schools were to
receive grants based on the needs of the school. Aid to rich
schools was to be phased out. The poor needy parish
schools were to be given greater aid. The Labor Party set up
the Schools Commission to administer the grants. However, the rich schools were able to lobby and keep their
grants. Although the Labor Party lost office in 1975, a
variation of the needs policy continues today, and we will
later examine how successful it has been in its original
object ofimproving the standard of the poorest schools.
Meanwhile, DOGS proceeded with the High Court
challenge, and went through extraordinary difficulties before a decision was handed down ten years later.
First the question of legal standing to sue took one and a
half years to settle before a Liberal Attorney-General paved
the way by allowing "fiat" - that is, an authorization to sue
in his name.

"The full court of the High Court of

Australia ruled . . . that state aid to
parochial schools was valid and not in
any wise in breach of Section 116 of the
Australian Constitution! The court ordered the plaintiffs to pay the costs of the
church schools in the case, even though
they were not originally named as defendants."
The churches tried to have the fiat withdrawn. The
DOGS had trouble retaining attorneys to fight the case.
Two senior attorneys employed were promoted by Liberal
governments to positions as judges, and therefore could not
continue in the case. (In Australia judges are appointed, not
elected.) Finally, an acceptable attorney was found who
stayed with the case to the end.
Because of the delays it became necessary to amend the
list of plaintiffs and also the writ. Opposition and obstruction delayed these amendments.
Then the defendants (the Federal Government) were
tardy in presenting their written defence. Further, representatives of church groups sought leave to appear in the
action as joint defendants although they were not originally
named as defendants in the writ. They were joined -as
defendants.
As defendants, the church school interests sought to
have their schools defined as educational institutions with
religious appendages, rather than as institutions with educational functions. This tactic meant that the DOGS group
The American Atheist

had to go to a trial of facts to prove that the church schools

were what their initiators and promoters had, for over a
hundred years, claimed them to be, while the church school
interests proceeded to try to prove otherwise.
The trial of facts was held, and no decision was made as to
the facts by the single judge, who simply referred the case to
the full court. The full court of the High Court of Australia
ruled by a majority of six to one that state aid to parochial
schools was valid and not in any wise in breach of Section
116 of the Australian Constitution! The court ordered the
plaintiffs to pay the costs of the church schools in the case,
even though they were not originally named as defendants.
Some of the plaintiffs announced that they would go to jail
rather than pay the costs. Although the church schools
have not pursued the plaintiffs for the costs, they have not
waived them, and could still press for costs of over
$200,000.

So it took ten years to decide the legal constitutionality of

state aid. Lest our High Court be thought of as one of the
world's slowest, it should be mentioned that the High Court
two months ago considered the issue of eligibilityof some
young people to vote in our recent federal election, and was
able to hear the case and hand down its decision within
three weeks of the issue of the writs!
.
The newspapers described the state aid decision as the
end of a political battle - the end of the state aid debate.
So it seemed for a while, with DOGS getting little
publicity. The main aspect of the issue that did get publicity
in that time was the question of accountability.
There are two main aspects of accountability. The first is
that public money may go to assist churches directly or
indirectly. The second is that private schools may reorganize their internal finances in such a way as to maximize
their grants.

The second area of accountability is the transferring of

funds from the current account to capital account. It was
proved in the High Court case that this occurs. In Exhibit 81
it was shown that there was an excess of funds in the
current account at one school so the surplus was transferred to the capital account.
By internal reorganization schemes it is possible to gain
the maximum government funding by having the school
reclassified into the "needy" category. The catholic schools
have reorganized on a massive scale to keep the maximum
number of schools in the "needy" category - all quite
legally.

"Thus, it pays a private school to spend

as little money on the school itself as
possible. This is a direct incentive for
schools to remain disadvantaged and
'needy.' ... It pays the catholic churches
to keep fees low, thus parishioners with
reduced private school fees can donate
more money to the church."
You will remember I mentioned the Labor Government
introduced the concept of "needs" in 1973 - that the
Schools Commission was to allocate funds to private
schools on the basis of the schools' "neediness."
Up to 1982, the neediness of private schools was
assessed purely on what each school actually spent, or
chose to spend, on its daily running costs, such as the
salaries of teachers and ancillary staff and maintenance
costs. The less money spent on these costs, the higher level

"... state aid has been used for church holiday camps and the relocation of church
real estate. Also church schools have used buses for non-educational purposes ....
What else goes on with government funds, only the church authorities know."
of subsidy attracted. At present the new government is
There is no requirement for private schools to provide
accurate, detailed, public costing of the spending of the
starting to take account of total income as a secondary
government funding. Over a billion dollars of taxpayers' , factor.
There is no obligation on any.private school to allocate
money is now handed over annually without the stringent
auditing requirements and public scrutiny that would be any of its money from private sources (such as fees,
bequests or donations) to pay for its daily running costs.
required if the money was to be spent within government
Thus, it pays a private school to spend as little money on
institu tions.
the school itself as possible. This is a direct incentive for
The DOGS had been able to show in the High Court
schools to remain disadvantaged and needy. The money a
case, that state aid funding had been used to fund parish
parish may have pumped into its parish school prior to State
churches, building of new combined churches and schools,
Aid is now kept for religious purposes. This way it is virtually
and to pay for religious lobbying of politicians. Since the
impossible for catholic schools to raise their resource
court case, DOGS has discovered state aid has been used
for church holiday camps and the relocation of church real standards. It pays the catholic churches to keep fees low,
thus parishioners with reduced private school fees can
estate. Also church schools have used buses for noneducational purposes, and had been able to combine a donate more money to the church.
With a billion dollars now flowing to private schools
chaplaincy of school with catholic students' movements,
and a parish with a school secretary. What else goes on with annually, private schools are booming.
Previously, in Victoria private schools reached their
government funds, only the church authorities know. And
lowest point in the percentage of pupils at private schools
they are not compelled to tell.
The Victorian Labor government has for the first time last out of the total number of students attending schools. In
month publicly released details of what each individual 1972 with 24% attending private schools and 76%attending
government schools, private schools were clearly on a
private school in Victoria receives.
Austin, Texas

June, 1983

Page 31

downward trend.
State Aid changed this. The percentage share of Victorian pupils attending private schools rose from 24% in '72
to 27% in '81 - a 3% increase. Government schools
dropped from their '72 high of 76%to 73%. But according to
Federal Government estimates, by 1986 Victorian private
schools will have increased their enrollment share to 31%
and government schools willhave decreased theirs to 69%.
Thus in under twenty-five years the proportion of pupils
at private schools willhave riseno7%, thanks to State Aid.
However, in the recent period of Liberal/Country Party
government from '75 to '82, there has been a real cut in the
Federal Government contribution to government schools.
From the '75-6financial year to the '82-3 financial year in the
six states, the average government school pupil in real
terms is $24/pupil worse off, while church school pupils in
real terms are $423/pupil better off.
This seven year period of massive growth in government
funding of private schools occurred during a period of
government economic austerity. Private schools have achieved a disproportionate increase in government spending on education. In the last two Federal budgets the
increase for private schools was over 30%, for universities
10%, and government schools 2%.
.
In comparison with noneducational areas of spending,
government schools also received a disproportionate increase.
Politicians had justified aid to private schools on the
grounds of aiding the poor and needy private schools. Not
only did the catholic schools reorganize themselves so that
more of their existing schools came into the needy category, but they also opened more new schools - all so
structured as to fall into the "needy" category from their
opening day!

"Not only does State Aid divide the

community along religious lines and culturallines but it also assists the division
of children by colour into black and
white."
The opening of new schools was not confined to the
catholics.
Australia's first islamic school has been opened this year.
There are new jewish schools and a maronite Lebanese
school. Not long ago virtually all jewish children were
educated in schools with children from different backgrounds. With State Aid, jewish schools have expanded and
new ones have opened. With State Aid jewish children are
now separated from moslem children, maronite children
and mainstream christian children. There can be no quicker
way to increase "antisemitism" than by this separation.
We also have a school for hare krishnas, the ananda
marga and hindu transcendental meditation. But the biggest growth in new schools has come from minor sects.
State Aid not only divides children into Roman catholic,
anglican, episcopalian, jewish liberal and jewish orthodox
but also into; union baptist, separate baptist, fundamental
baptist, lutheran, seventh day adventist, calvinist, Greek
orthodox, christian scientist, church of the first-born,
fundamentalist, pentacostal, assembly of god, charismatic,
Page 32

June, 1983

etc., etc.
Not only does State Aid divide the community along
religious lines and cultural lines but it also assists the
division of children by colour into black and white. New
all-Black schools, mostly run by religious orders, have been
established.
There is one country that has separate education for
blacks and whites. It is South Africa, and their system is
called apartheid. In the U.S.A. busing was introduced to
overcome the divisiveness of separate education along
colour lines.
Thus the policy of government funding to private schools
has meant not merely aiding existing poor and needy
parochial schools, but the building of more and more new
parochial schools, and the setting up of more and more
church schools for a wide variety of sects and cults. The
only bright spot, perhaps, is that some nonreligious educationally experimental schools have been aided. But these
number only a handful compared to religious schools.
The government has restricted only a few bizarre religious schools, mostly those using the "Accelerated Christian Education" program from America. One had its
registration as an educational institution taken from it in
1981. But such schools have been able to reorganize their
curriculum, modify the worst aspects of their practices, and
reapply for registration.
Not only has State Aid drained the economic and
educational priorities of the federal and state governments,
it has also meant a drain on the number of pupils at
government schools.
This is best seen in rural areas. An example in elementary
education is in Mildura, a provincial city in my state. Its new
baptist and lutheran schools increase the number of
elementary schools in Mildura from three to five and
decrease the number of pupils at the government schools.
A more extreme example is in the provincial town of Murtoa
where the government elementary school's enrollment has
been halved from 150 within four years with a catholic and
lutheran school taking half the students. Instead of one
larger elementary school run by the government, Murtoa
has three smallish schools. By 1986 all Murtoa's students
could be accommodated in the one government elementary
school with large savings, as a result of economies of scale,
and other benefits to the pupils.
In very small rural towns you can now find three or four
elementary schools in walking distance of each other with
twenty to fifty pupils each! .
The effect on high schools in rural areas are clearly
revealed by government school principals under threat of
new non-government high schools in their region. They
have stated that more schools means fewer students at
each school, which in turn means each school has less
ability to provide a wide range of courses. As the number of
students falls, so does funding, and standards drop. Senior
students attempting to pursue career options are the
hardest hit.
A drop in funding places a greater load on the maintenance of existing plant, grounds, equipment and buildings.
Staff in excess willbe forced to readjust to other areas or
become unemployed.
State Aid thus creates unnecessary fragmentation of
educational facilities in rural areas to an extent where none
The American Atheist

of the schools in a region - government or private - can

satisfy the career prerequisites they currently satisfy.
This fragmentation also occurs in the cities forcing
students to travel further and communities to unnecessarily
duplicate facilities.
Perhaps one solution would be the sharing of resources
with joint government and religious schools. This is already
happening with a joint catholic- government school having
just opened in my state.

"State Aid thus creates unnecessary

fragmentation of educational facilities in
ruralareas to an extent where none of the
schools in a region - government or
private - can satisfy the career prerequisites they currently satisfy."
Why shouldn't we have shared resources - shared
buildings, facilities, teachers or materials:?
First, it debases the concept of education being free,
universal and secular as it permits a religious input or
religious control over the facilities and teaching staff. It
assists in the maintenance and expansion of church
schools. The American experience showed that it can lead
to "captured" government schools, which fall under the
control of a religious council. It can mean the granting of
privileges to private schools which are denied to government school students.
There is another alternative to shared resources, and
that is complete takeover of the government school by
religious interests. Already part of one government high
school in our national capital, Canberra, has been leased to
a religious organization. Now it is planned to hand over a
government high school in Sydney's eastern suburbs to a
jewish orthodox college. The State Government School
Teacher's Federation is organizing a sit-in, to begin at the
end of April, in an effort to stop Australia's first handover of
a government school to private interests. This battle must
be won.

I have looked at the effect of State Aid to the present time.

As of March this year we have a new Federal Government
with new policies. To understand what they are likely to do
in the future we need to examine the decisions made at their
last conference, their stated policy, and the actions of their
spokespersons this year.
Austin, Texas

At their conference in July last year a motion to increase

government scrutiny of subsidies was carried by 48 to 47.
However, the Chairman ruled that the vote was lost as the
rules required a winning vote to have a majority of
credential delegates so one more vote was required.
The Labor Party ended up with a policy to spend
government funds on nongovernment schools in a more
selective way. The party said it would stop funding the
schools of privilege and wealth. The Labor Party st-ated it
would establish a standard of resource use, probably based
on the income spent per student at government schools.
Any private school which operated above this standard
would get no government assistance, while poorer nongovernment schools would get assistance designed to raise
their use of resources.
It was attacked by the catholic church, which believes
that each child should attract some government assistance
for his or her education, no matter which school the child
attends.
The Labor Party sought compromise with the catholic
church. The church said compromise was not possible. The
hardening of the teachers' unions in the last year or so
against State Aid resulted in the Australian Teachers'
Federation withdrawing its representation on the Schools
Commissions.
Came '83 and a sudden snap election. When the Labor
Party leader, Bob Hawke, made his policy speech, he
softened policy by allowing a phasing out period of grants to
the richest schools over four years. He won the election.
The grants remain unchanged this year, and it is to be
hoped that the new Prime Minister will keep to his stated
policy. But this policy does nothing to stop the growth of
new "needy" schools based on religious, ethnic, colour or
culture divisions .'

"The lesson to be gained from the history

of State Aid in Australia is that you must
stop efforts to fund parochial schools in
any shape or form, because once the
churches get the thin edge of the wedge,
they increase their leverage."
The new Labor Government will be under continual
pressure from religious interests for more money, while
DOGS, the teachers' union and the councils of government
school organizations will lobby to stop State Aid.
The battle continues. We think State Aid must be
abolished.
The battle need not have started if Atheists and others
had put up a tough fight against any government funding of
parochial schools at the very beginning. The churches
originally gained science laboratories, then libraries, then
per capita grants, then increased grants, and more and
more money. The lesson to be gained from the history of
State Aid in Australia is that you must stop efforts to fund
parochial schools in any shape or form, because once the
churches get the thin edge of the wedge, they increase their
leverage. Stop them before they start.

June, 1983

Page

33

PROPOSAL FOR A MEDIA CAMPAIGN

by John B. Massen

When the American Atheist organization started, legally and officially, in June, 1963, it was strugglingfor its
life. Another organization had preceded it during the period of '59 to '63, when the Murrav-O'Hoir family felt
the repercussions from the religious (primarily Roman catholic) community of Baltimore, Maryland where the
case of Murray v. Curlett began. That organization (which consisted of half a dozen people) had taken the
name orMaryland Committee for Separation of State and Church." The only goal at that time was to win the
case which would outlaw teacher-led bible reading and prayer recitation in the public schools of the United
States.
It is now 20 years later and the purpose of American Atheists has changed as dramatically as has the
organization. Recently, John Massen, of the San Francisco Chapter of American Atheists, put together a
statement which he hoped the organization would use for assistance in deueloping an effectiue media
campaign. It presented the Atheist position with such dignity that the editors felt the entire readership would
appreciate it. Therefore, it is presented here:

I. PURPOSE OF AMERICAN ATHEISTS

A. NATIONAL

To promote freedom FROM religion in America

It is not enough to have only freedom of religion - i.e. the
right to choose which of the many available alternative
religious belief systems one wishes to accept. It is equally
important to be free to reject all religious belief systems
which are based on the assumption that there is a supernatural being or agency that intervenes in the lives of
individuals or in the course of natural events.
Atheists accept that there is no life after death, that the
only life is "here and now." Atheists seek to lead ethical lives
in their relations with others, because that is the rational
approach to a good and just society in which their own
well- being can best be assured. They reject the rewards of a
mythical heaven and the punishments of amythical hell as a
motivator of good personal behavior. Atheists encourage
the development and public acceptance of a humane ethical
system, stressing the mutual sympathy, understanding and
interdependence
of all people and the corresponding
reo
sponsibility of each, individually, in relation to society.
2. To defend the ciuil rights of Atheists, where they are
violated on the basis of an individual's espousal of Atheism
as a lifestyle
The constitutions of five states (Arkansa;, Mississippi,
Pennsylvania,
South Carolina and Texas) have barred
those who lack a belief in a "god" or in a "supreme being"
from holding public office or an office of public trust within
the state. Individual Atheists in these states have been
summarily dismissed from their long-held public service
employment when they publicly revealed they are Atheists.
This has happened
also in other states lacking such
constitutional provisions.
The American Atheist organization has filed many legal
suits to have such state constitutional provisions declared
unconstitutional
as a violation of the First Amendment of
the federal Constitution and to restore to their jobs those
who have been discriminated
against because of their
1.

Page 34

June, i983

Atheism. American Atheists have in very recent years ('79'83) been able to have these disabilities removed in T ennessee and North Carolina.
3. To labor for, in all lawful ways, the complete and
absolute separation of state and church in America
American Atheists take the strictly constitutional
stand
interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States. We
feel, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his famous letter to the
Danbury baptists, that the clause against establishment
of
religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation
between Church and State." In the case of Allen u. Morton
in 1973, the U.S. Court of Appeals and the District of
Columbia summed up in a three- part test the basics of
separation of state and church:
"T 0 pass muster under the Establishment Clause, the
law in question, first, must reflect a clearly secular
legislative purpose, second, have a primary effect that
neither advances nor hinders religion, and third, must
avoid excessive government entanglement
with religion."
Separation of state and church means much more than this
expression in legal terms. It is the essential prerequisite to
personal survival of Atheists. Without separation, the arm
of the state can be used to force an Atheist to profess a
religious belief or restrict his/her freedom in the absence of
such a required profession. Only when state and church are
separated and the church is made to stand alone, on its
dogma, does the Atheist have a chance. When the church
stands alone, it can be confronted
on equal ground,
intellectually, with the invalidity of its dogmas; when backed
by the power of the state, the church is virtually invulnerable to intellectual challenge to its dogmas.

B. LOCAL CHAPTERS
To promote and advance the purpose of the national
organization in the 48 state and local chapters by:
Expanding the chapters into a strong and vital
organization that will be increasingly influential in the
cities.
The American Atheist

Organizing additional chapters in other counties of

the states in which local chapters exist to become
strong, vital and influential in their areas.

II. DEGREE OF SUCCESS IN

ACHIEVING THE PURPOSE
A. NATIONAL
American Atheists has made substantial progress in just
twenty years toward fulfillment of its purpose:
1. Public school religious ceremonies. Religious ceremonies (bible reading and prayer recitation) were removed
from the nation's public schools by the famous Murray v.
Curlett 8-1 decision by the United States Supreme Court in
June of 1963.
2. Atheist publications. Atheist material in the form of an
American Atheist monthly magazine, books, booklets and
sound recordings have been placed in public libraries
across the country. The Library of Congress now has an
official separate classification for Atheism in its subject
index files for the first time in U.S. history, due to American
Atheists.
3. Radio programs. Production of the first American
Atheist Radio Series led to use of the series of IS-minute
once-weekly broadcasts on some 50 public arrd educational
radio stations in numerous states. American Atheists now
produces a half-hour monthly broadcast for satellite distribution over National Public Radio. American Atheist Radio
Talk Shows are now on the air in two major areas (Houston
and New York City) through the generosity of the Pacifica
Radio Foundation. More Atheist talk shows are planned for
other outlets in the future.
4. TV programs. The half-hour weekly American Atheist
television series is now being broadcast on major market
able television systems in a growing list of cities, with new
systems picking up the program each month. Both the
American Atheist Radio Series and the American Atheist
Forum on television are provided free of charge to the
stations that air them as a public service from American
Atheists.
5. Litigation. Standing by as a "watchdog" organization to
sponsor continuing litigation on separation of state and
church issues, American Atheists consistently monitors
and litigates in response to many different fact situations
around the country to maintain a "wall of separation"
between state and church. Though not always successful,
American Atheists maintains a high degree of presence in
the nation's courts, never letting the legal community forget
its obligation to maintain constitutional separation guarantees.
6. Speakers Bureau. An American Atheist Speakers
Bureau of Informed spokespersons is maintained for media.
college and university appearances. Atheist spokespersons
are for the first time widely accepted for engagements.
7. Local Chapters. With formation of 48 local chapters in
27 states and Canada, Atheists can now engage in local
activities in their areas with other Atheists, backed up by a
qualified national staff.
8. Trust fund. With establishment of an American Atheist
Sustaining Trust Fund, Atheists can now invest in a
permanent future for their organization. The Trust Fund
goal is to raise enough funds for operation of the national
American Atheist Center from interest revenues alone,
Austin, Texas

leaving the principal intact. In the past, Atheist organizations have always derived their financing from one or two
wealthy individuals. The Trust Fund is designed to accumulate working capital for the survival of American Atheists
perpetually without dependence on large single sustainers.
9. Library and archives. Establishment of the Charles E.
Stevens American Atheist Library and Archives permits
preservation of the written part of Atheism's long history,
both in the United States and around the world. With some
20,000 books and over 100,000 newsletters, pamphlets and
flyers from as far back as 1612, the American Atheist
Library is the largest collection of Atheist material in the
Western world. Strictly a research facility, the Library plays
host each year to researchers from around the world.
10. American Atheist Center. A national American
Atheist Center has been established in Austin, Texas: a
32-room million dollar complex from which outreach programs are managed. The Center has its own in-house
printing, folding and stitching, radio, TV, computer, typesetting, word processing, and direct mail facilities. It also
houses the American Atheist Library and Archives, as well
as an extensive clipping file on state/church issues worldwide. No other Atheist organization has, historically, ever
had a base of operations like American Atheists.
11. Dial-an-Atheist programs. Started by the founder of
the American Atheist Museum, Mr. Lloyd Thoren, American Atheists has pioneered through its chapters a series of
phone message services where the public can dial in and
listen to a different Atheist educational message every
couple of days. There are now some 26 "Dial-an-Atheist"
services in that many cities, in addition to the "Dial-THEAtheist" service located at the national American Atheist
Center featuring Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, founder of
American Atheists.
12. Separation of Communism and Atheism. Popularizing the term" AMERICAN Atheist" accomplished the goal
of separating, in the public view, the notion of any relation
between the political position of Communism and the
lifestyle of Atheism. Atheists no longer need to live under
the dreadful stigma of the McCarthy era of our nation, when
every nonchristian was branded with the political concept
of Communism.
13. Leadership development. A diversity of Atheist
leaders and spokespersons has been developed across the
country. Past Atheist organizations have been led by one
charismatic individual. When that person died, the organization died with him or her. American Atheists has developed
and trained several articulate national spokespersons, as
well as many Atheist leaders on a local basis through its
chapters, so that it willnot fallvictim, as an organization, to
the fate of those that have gone before.
14.' American Atheist Museum. American Atheists inspired creation of the first such museum in the Western
world. Located in Petersburg, Indiana, in the heart of the
American Midwest, it contains exhibits on both Atheist and
religious history, philosophy, literature, and development. It
also has exhibits on natural history and science, emphasizing the role they played in freethought history.
15. Reprinting Atheist classics. In the past, many of the
best works on Atheism specifically, and freethought in
general, were financed by independently wealthy Atheists
through what are called "vanity" presses. Most often 500 or
1000 copies were printed in hard cover. American Atheist

June, 1983

Page 35

Press, an affiliate of American Atheists, has been reprinting

these out-of-print classics in soft-cover, some in their
entirety and some serialized.
16. United World Atheists. United World Atheists has
been organized to stimulate communication and coordinated programs among Atheist and freethought groups
from many countries. UWA is a loose affiliation'of Atheist
groups from such nations as France, England, Germany,
Italy, Sweden, Finland, India and Australia. Each group is
guaranteed its autonomy, but pledges continued communication and desire to coordinate efforts in any area where
identical principles of freedom from religion, freedom of
speech, or freedom of thought are involved. UWA holds
World Atheist Meets every two years in varying locations
around the world. Articles in many languages are freely
exchanged among the journals of each of the organizations
involved.
B. LOCAL CHAPTERS
The local Chapters are now well established, with active
Boards of Directors, regular monthly public meetings of
members open also to nonmembers, monthly newsletters
to members and a large number of fr.iends who are
sympathetic but who do not hold membership, a Dial-anAtheist service, a successful program of public service
announcements on TV stations, and an annual Solstice
Party celebrating the Winter Solstice. They have stimulated
nuclei of members in other areas who are seeking to
organize further local chapters and have held informal
social meetings in other areas in the hope that these may
lead eventually to organization of new chapters.

III. REASONS FOR PRODUCING

A MEDIA CAMPAIGN
There is a clear and present danger that the United States
willsteadily drift toward becoming a theocracy. The fundamentalist, and particularly the electronic churches, have
never had such an influence from within our government as
they do now, especially through representatives high in the
Executive Branch.
Our president last August said there is no basis for
freedom from religion in our land ("We are supposed to
have freedom of religion. Nothing in the Constitution says
'freedom from religion.' "). A few days ago he said that our
federal budget can be more easily balanced if people live by
the ten commandments and the golden rule.
The gullibilityof a significant minority of our public is truly
frightening. An Oral Roberts can claim that he actually saw,
a 900-ft. "Jesus," who picked up and set down a large
university building, and who commanded Oral to raise more
money for the university. And his listeners responded with a
flood of millions of dollars!
Recently we have seen the emergence of "liberal left"
churches and religious organizations being openly critical of
the "radical right" born-againers. The criticism by the
former is not directed at their goals so much as at their
methods. The former exert their powerful influence on
government quietly, discreetly and invisibly; they wish to
control us overtly. But the long-range goal of both groups is
substantially the same: control of our minds and conduct
through religious indoctrination beginning with the very
Page 36

June, 1983

young and continuing at least through adolescence.

Australia has taught us that "it can happen here." Sec.
116 of the Australian constitution has the same purpose of
state/church separation as the First Amendment to our
Constitution. But on February 10, 1981, the Australian High
Court in a 6-1 decision ruled that Commonwealth statutes,
which over a period of several decades had evolved to very
high levels of financial support to parochial schools, were
not a violation of Sec. 116. This validated the allocation in
1981 of 48% of the commonwealth's expenditures for
education to private, nongovernmental schools which
served only 22.3% of school children, while only 47.8% of
educational expenditures were allocated to governmental
public schools serving 77.6% of school children. Public
funds are used for capital construction as well as operating
costs of parochial schools used also for adult religious
meetings. The pathetic result is that young minds in those
parochial schools will be indoctrinated with medievalist
religious dogmas approved and, indeed, endorsed by one of
the advanced states of our century. Australia came to this
tragic condition because the Atheists, Rationalists, Humanists, and Secularists in Australia - as organized bodies
- did nothing.
It is almost impossible to attempt litigation of such broad
social issues as the attempt of the Roman catholic church to
capture the educational system with complete tax support.
Broad support by the general public absolutely must be
found for Atheist judges, Atheist politicians, Atheist educators, Atheist ... everything.
It has been repeatedly and reliably estimated that around
25% of our adults are either Atheist or "agnostic." These
persons are totally unchurched and indifferent to religion.
But they are also equally indifferent to the clear and present
danger that faces our nation and themselves individually that America can become a theocracy, with its terrible
consequences.
There is a widespread, irrational prejudice against Atheism and Atheists. Conversely, there is a deep reluctanceeven fear - on the part of conscious Atheists to "come out
of the closet" and openly admit (when it is appropriate to do
so) that they are Atheists. Atheists are roughly in the same
position, socially and politically, as homosexuals were
about a decade ago. It is still socially, politically and
economically risky to publicly affirm that one is an Atheist.
Famous media personalities have privately acknowledged
their Atheism and also their unwillingness to be publicly
known as Atheists because of the inevitable social censure
and substantial economic losses.
Next to the prevention of nuclear war - where not
merely all humanity but all life on the planet is ultimately at
risk - the battle for FREEDOM OF THE MIND is probably
the second most urgent and difficult struggle for humankind. That freedom, in fact, is a vital factor in eliminating our
government's pretext of "fighting evil Atheism" for starting
nuclear war. The one-fourth of our population who are
"latent Atheists" must be reached, energized and activated.
That is the purpose of the public media campaign for
Atheists.

IV. TIME SCHEDULE

Our short-term

goal is to reach the media with an

The American Atheist

by the national staff, to broaden the impact of local efforts

and to stimulate organization of new Chapters in areas not
now served.

effective appeal to latent Atheists in any given area, to

attend annual national conventions of American Atheists
and annual national Solstice picnics. That will be our first
effort effort in a local new and potentially extensive public
media campaign. If it proves effective, we willwish to go on
from there with long-term media efforts.
The second state will be a broader and more sustained
media campaign by each Chapter alone, to expand its
outreach and influence. That effort might continue for
about six months. Having tested and validated the effectiveness of that campaign, then . . .
The third stage willbe a sharing of that media campaign
with all the other Chapters. This would fillanother half year.
Hopefully, this stage willbe accompanied by a real surge of
their membership in the areas they serve.
The fourth stage willbe adaptation of the media campaign

V. RESOURCES AVAILABLE
Resources currently on hand in each chapter are relatively small. However, any chapter should raise at least $500 for
the first-stage effort. Fundamentally, the funds for continuing the media campaign must be generated by the campaign
itself. We expect that at least part of the second-stage effort
will involve the printing of a newspaper advertisement
which presents an Atheist message, and asks those who
agree with it to contribute funds to pay for that ad and to
expand the media campaign.

3!E

WHAT THE PUBLIC DOESN'T

UNDERSTAND ABOUT
THE ENO OF THE WORLD
By John Somerville

Professor Emeritus of Philosophy

City University of New York

(John Somerville is the author of ten books widely used in American universities and translated into many languages.
Among those bearing directly on the problem of world peace are The Philosophy of Peace, with an introduction by Albert
Einstein, 1954; and The Peace Revolution, 1975. Dr. Somerville has been author-participant in three of the international
research projects of UNESCO for the strengthening of peaceful coexistence. This article was written in 1979 but, as
probably every American alive knows, the situation which it addresses has become more acute. Dr. Somerville was a
featured speaker at this year's American Atheist Convention.)
I found out about the end of the world in 1970, when Iwas
teaching a course called Man, War, and Peace. On the
lookout for source material, I chanced upon a paperback by
Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, which had first appeared shortly after his
assassination, under the startling subtitle, The Story About
How the World Almost Ended.
The subtitle proved accurate, for the memoir is a sort of
death bed confession honestly and bravely written by
President Kennedy's closest adviser throughout the crisis
of '62. It is the most important document concerning the
end of the world ever to appear in print; because the
physical power to end the world had never previously
existed, so that no person or group could realistically have
made the decision to end it. Robert Kennedy tells us how
that decision was made by a group of Americans fully aware
of all its ghastly consequences. On his first page he calls the
crisis "a confrontation between the two giant atomic
nations, the U.S. and U.S.S.R., which brought the world to
the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of the
mankind."
Now what was the cause of this crisis, unprecedented in
magnitude? It could not have been that the Soviets had set
up missile bases 90 miles from our coast, since we already
had our missile bases in Turkey, closer to the U.S.S.R. than
Cuba is to us. It could not have been that the Soviets had
Austin, Texas

lied to us about their missiles, since we had already lied to

them about our financing, training and equipping a military
force to invade their friend Cuba at the Bay of Pigs the year
before. A crisis between two giant nations does not follow
from one of them doing what the other has already done.
There was a "crisis" only because one nuclear giant, the
U.S., rejecting the offer of the other to settle the matter
peacefully by simultaneous removal of both sets of missile
bases; sent an ultimatum to the Soviets: You must remove
your bases from Cuba unilaterally and unconditionally
within 24 hours, or we will destroy them by invasion and
bombing.
Kennedy acknowledges that this decision was taken in
spite of two facts which would be almost impossible to
believe if he himself did not confirm them: 1) the president
and his top advisers expected that bombing the Soviet
bases would begin World War IIIas a nuclear conflict which
would annihilate humankind. 2) The president and his top
advisers expected that the Soviets would not obey the
ultimatum, and that this omnicidal conflict would take
place. Yet the ultimatum was delivered. Robert Kennedy
himself took it to the Soviet ambassador, and reports
precisely what was said:
.
"We (the U.S.) had to have a commitment by
tomorrow that those bases would be removed. He
should understand that if they did not remove those

June, 1983

Page 37

bases, we would remove them. He asked me what

offer the U.S. was making. He raised the question of
our removing our missiles from Turkey. I said there
could be no quid pro quo or any arrangement. I
returned to the White House. The president was not
optimistic, nor was I. He ordered 24 troop-carrier
squadrons of the Air Force Reserve to active duty.
They would be necessary for an invasion. He had not
abandoned hope, but what hope there was now rested
with Khrushchev's revising his course within the next
few hours. It was a hope, not an expectation. The
expectation was a military confrontation by Tuesday
and possibly tomorrow."
Kennedy further reports what the president expected to
result from this war: "The thought that disturbed him the
most, and that made the prospect of war much more fearful
than it would otherwise have been, was the specter of the
death of the children of this country and all the world - the
young people who had no role, who had no say, who knew
nothing even of the confrontation, but whose lives would be
snuffed out like everyone else's." Thus, it was judged better
to end the human world than to grant equal rights to the
Soviets, and the only reason it didn't end then was that the
Soviets unexpectedly obeyed the ultimatum ..
I

Philosophy I chaired an international colloquium dealing

with nuclear war, centering it on the implications of the
Cuban missile crisis. The Soviet participants, led by the
vice-president of their Academy of Sciences, all took the
same line: they will never again give in to nuclear blackmail;
the next time the U.S. starts it, they will finish it; why
doesn't the U.S. accept their offer of mutual no-first-use?
If there is not enough sanity left among us to recognize
these facts and act on them in time, then the human world
will end, in agonies undreamed of. But these facts can be
recognized and acted on. They can be communicated to
students in the classroom, to the public, and to our leaders.
Raise the right questions and tell the truth about the
answers. Who decided in 1962 that it would be best to end
the human world? Who threatened in 1977, in our name, to
be first to use the nuclear weapons that can now overkill all
humankind? Who refused and ignored the offers of 1976
and 1979 to conclude a mutal agreement of no first use of
nuclear weapons? We the people can and must make clear
to our "leaders" that their present policies are insane
violations of our inalienable right to life, and that our
founding Declaration teaches us that we have not only the
right but the duty to abolish any government which
repeatedly violates this inalienable right, on which everything else now depends.

"It was a hope, not an expectation. The

expectation was a military confrontation
.by Tuesday and possibly tomorrow."
A Light
That was 1962. Are things better today? Hardly. Since
1962, nuclear weapons have greatly increased in number
and destructiveness, and we have explicitly abandoned our
previously reiterated policy of not using nuclear weapons
unless they are first used against us. This abandonment was
confirmed by president Carter in his U.N. speech October
4,1977, when he said: "I hereby solemnly declare on behalf
of the United States that we will not use nuclear weapons
except in self-defense, that is, in circumstances of an actual
nuclear or conventional attack on the United States, our
territories or armed forces, or such an attack on our allies."
Thus, in case of anything he deems an "attack," with
whatever weapons, against any of our 400 foreign bases or
60 treaty allies around the globe, our president willbe first to
use nuclear weapons.
This means that our present policy-makers have learned
nothing from the Cuban missile crisis except that the
nuclear blackmail, the ending of the human world, with
which we threatened the Soviets, unexpectedly succeeded.
That our present leaders have determined to persist with
this policy is doubly confirmed by the fact that the Carter
administration has twice refused the offer made by the
U.S.S.R. on behalf of the Warsaw Pact states, to the U.S.
and the NA TO states, to sign a mutual agreement that
neither side would be the first to use nuclear weapons. This
offer, made in 1976, was repeated in 1979; and it is probably
the most unforgiveable "sin" ever committed by our media
that these offers, directly concerned with preventing the
ending of the human world, were given so little coverage
that our public is scarcely aware of them.
Meanwhile, what have the Soviets learned from the
Cuban missile crisis? At the XVth World Congress of
Page 38

June, 1983

Out and out shines a light,

Burning through the full and rainy night,
Like the last beam of supposed morality
From the street to a dark and smoky den of iniquity,
Glimmering against the moist sidewalk,
Showing us the way so that we can not turn aside and talk
Of all the things we should not say or wish,
Holding out the accepted way like some rancid dish.
The savagery of that gentle little light,
As it cuts and rips through the night,
Keeps us on the true path home
And ensures us that we speak in the correct tone
And don't wander through the jungle the rain
and night create,
Trying to find out where our personal unicorns wait,
And it provides a safety feature that's rather unwished for,
Waiting, arms out-stretched, like some domineering whore.
Out and out shines that light,
Preventing our wild and wished-for flight
To the imaginary land such a night suggests,
Where all we dream of appears at our behests
And untamed exploration again becomes part of life
While the unknown no longer strings like a knife.
But that light, searing through the darkness,
Checks all dreams like this.

Robin Eileen Murray-O'Hair

The American Atheist

THERMODYNAMICS AND EVOLUTION

by John W. Patterson
Excerpted from the book Scientists Confront Creationism edited by Laurie R. Godfrey.
Copyright 1983 by Laurie Godfrey
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.
(John W. Patterson received his M.S. in mining engineering and Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from Ohio
State University and currently holds the position of professor of engineering in the Department of Materials Science
and Engineering at Iowa State University at Ames. His
main interests are thermodynamics
and solid electrochemistry, and it is in these two fields that he has published
most.)

INTRODUCTION
Henry Morris, director of the Institute for Creation
Research OCR},has joined several other engineers to make
thermodynamics a cornerstone of the creation-evolution
controversy. For twenty years Morris has maintained that
the second law of thermodynamics directly contradicts
evolution. This is a simple allegation with profound apparent consequences. After all, the second law of thermodynamics was formulated well before Charles Darwin
published his Origin of Species. Morris has argued that the
century and a quarter of research in the fieldof evolutionary
biology amounts to naught; effort could have been more
wisely channeled into productive endeavors had someone
only recognized the contradiction he points out. Could the.
second law of thermodynamics contradict evolution? Could
the disciplines of thermodynamics and biology have been so
isolated from one another that a paradox of such import
could have gone unrecognized for over a hundred years? Is
there, indeed, a paradox at all?
The answer to this question is, quite simply - no! Morris
and his colleagues have constructed a completely fallacious
and deceptive argument. Central to their reasoning is the
notion that "uphill" processes cannot occur naturally. In
making their case, they have first exaggerated the extent to
which evolution is an "uphill" process (see chapter by Raup,
this volume). But, granting that evolution does involve some
uphill changes, it is nevertheless false that these contradict
any principle derived from the study of thermodynamics. In
order to demonstrate this, it willbe necessary to discuss the
first two laws of thermodynamics and some of the technical
terms used in connection with them.
CAN WATER RUN UPHILL?
In his book The Troubled Waters of Evolution, Henry
Morris develops an argument against evolution using a
water flow analogy. His chapter "Can Water Run Uphill?"
alleges that evolution to higher forms is as impossible as
water pumping itself uphill, because both contradict the
second law of thermodynamics (the "entropy principle").
Beneath a frontispiece photo of a picturesque waterfall, the
following caption appears:
"Evolutionists have fostered the strange belief that
everything is involved in a process of progress, from
chaotic particles billions of years ago all the way up to
complex people today. The fact is, the most certain
Austin, Texas

laws of science state that the real processes of nature

do not make things go uphill, but downhill. Evolution is
impossible!" (p. 1l0)
And then just a bit "downstream" in the text we find the
following passage:
"There is ... firm evidence that evolution never could
take place. The law of increasing entropy is an
impenetrable barrier which no evolutionary mechanism yet suggested has ever been able to overcome.
Evolution and entropy are opposing and mutually
exclusive concepts. If the entropy principle is really a
universal law, then evolution must be impossible." (p.
Ill)
The second law of thermodynamics does indeed describe
an overall tendency in nature toward decay. While the first
law asserts that no energy is ever lost, the second law states
that energy willalways tend of its own accord to pass from a
more useful or available form to a less available status.
Because of this, there are countless spontaneous processes
going on all the time, and they are downhill processes in just
the sense that Morris and the creationists explain. However, this does not at all rule out the possibility that
backward or uphill processes can take place in nature. In
fact, it provides the very energy fluxes which can drive the
uphill building processes that occur in life and evolution
(Broda, 1975; Bronowski, 1970; Schrodinger, 1945). The
point is that a great many processes in nature are coupled to
predominant downhill fluxes and are coupled in such a way
that they are actually driven in the backward or uphill
direction. As long as the downhill flows, off of which they
feed, exceed the build-up or construction processes, no

June, 1983

Page 39

violation of the second law is involved. As long as this

excess prevails, the net effect of the coupled processes is in
the downhill direction; that is to say, they result in a net
increase in entropy. Thus, living,evolving organisms as well
as whole segments of the biosphere are viewed as "open
systems" that can proceed to configurations of much lower
entropy merely by feeding off the downhill fluxes that
abound in nature.
The thermodynamicist uses somewhat abstruse Ianguage - the language of "classical" thermodynamics - to
say this same thing. One finds such concepts as "systems,"
"processes," "extensive variables," and so on defined in a
very technical way. Many people, unfamiliar with the jargon
of thermodynamics, are easily misled by those who would
distort the subject to their own advantage. To mitigate this
deceit, I willprovide a rather simplified description of these
basic laws and concepts and convey an understanding of
them in terms of familiar examples and analogies.

the rubric of information theory.)

We come now to an extremely important point, and one
that is not emphasized nearly enough. It turns out that
energy and entropy, like Lavoisier's masses or weights, are
"inventoriable commodities" - what thermodynamicists
call extensive properties. That is, both are subject to being
transferred from place to place in the universe. Moreover,
transfers in these and other extensive commodities are
going on all the time. Lavoisier would have had a circus with
this discovery, because his highly quantitative accounting
ledgers can be used to keep tabs on all this activity. Indeed,
much of thermodynamic theory is little more than working
out the proper accounting methods for all the "inventory"
transfers and heat and work exchanges that one may wish
to consider. A process in thermodynamics is any action that
brings about any sort of inventory change or exchange.
Inventory exchanges are thought of as occurring between
systems within the universe.

"... a great many processes in nature are coupled to predominant downhill fluxes and
are coupled in such a way that they are actually driven in the backward or uphill
direction. "
THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS
The science of thermodynamics is said to have begun in
the early 1800s with an analysis of heat engines by the great
engineer Sadi Carnot (1824; see Feynman, Leighton, Sands
1963). Its two basic laws, however, have since been stated
and restated in several alternative but equivalent formulations. One such formulation was that of Clausius (1865),
which can be translated as follows:
First law: The Energy Inventory of the World IS
Constant
. "Die Energie der Welt ist Constant"
Second Law: The Entropy Inventory of the World
Tends to a Maximum
"Die Entropie der Welt strebt einem Maximum Zu"
These laws succinctly characterized what was then known
about the theory of heat engines and the processes for
getting work from heat. Remarkably, it has since been
found that all other processes in nature conform to these
laws, including the life processes.
The first law deals with the conservation of energy, a
defined quantity that changes from one form to another.
One of the most fruitful and widely applicable conservation
principles of science, its logical structure is similar to the
principle of conservation of mass. That principle was
discovered years earlier, in the 1770s, by Antoine Lavoisier.
Lavoisier applied meticulous accounting methods to the'
study of combustion, smelting, and calcination (Gale, 1979)
and thereby converted alchemy into the quantitative science now known as chemistry.
Unlike the first law, the second law of thermodynamics
involves no conservation principles whatever. It deals only
with the directionality of natural processes and uses
entropy, another defined quantity, to determine which
directional processes are possible in nature and which are
not. Any process that would imply a net increase signals a
possible process. (Nothing analogous to entropy and the
second law preceded their discovery; however, analogs
have since turned up in communications engineering under
Page 40

June, 1983

Only two kinds of systems need be mentioned here.

Isolated systems, of which the universe is considered to be
the prime example, are those that exchange absolutely
nothing with their surroundings. Strictly speaking, they are
the only kind to which Clausius's laws apply, and one often
finds "isolated systems" substituted for "the universe" or
"die Welt" in alternative (but equivalent) formulations.
Open systems are quite different. They are all the subsystems that go together to make up the universe. These
can exchange heat, work, and substances with each other,
and there are countless examples of them: a turbine pump,
a jet engine, a simple flame, any organism, the entire
biosphere of earth (or any segment thereof), and so on. A
good understanding of these two kinds of systems is
essential for discussions about the first and second laws.
FIRST

LAW

L\ET"TAL ~ 0

._._._._._.-

E:N ER.GY

cON<;r""'T
/

SECOA/l>

b.STDTAl

1--. _.

_.

OtrRcPHY

~/GUA.E

LAW

> -'-'0

S IIJCI!(.ASS

L COURoiYARO

MfTAPWORS

fO~

It'

Ali.

'2~

LAWS

Allow me to illustrate with the quaint metaphor of Figure

1. Just think of the universe as a walled-in (isolated)
courtyard under a blanket of freshly fallen snow. Ifno snow
is coming down, this blanket simulates the energy inventory
of an isolated system. It is isolated by the walls and does not
increase in total amount. Even though this total amount of
snow (energy) remains fixed, localized drifts (increases) and
furrows (decreases) can be caused by some process such
The American Atheist

as the wind swirling about. Every subsection of the courtyard simulates an open system because snow can transfer
either in or out. The regions that house the' drift and furrow
respectively correspond to two open systems that have
mutually exchanged some energy. This example illustrates
energy exchanges, but entropy exchanges are a little
different.

Growing organisms are but additional examples of localized entropy reductions. One cannot insist that the second
law of thermodynamics contradicts evolution without simultaneously maintaining that growth - development,
"morphogenesis" - is similarly impossible. And evolution is
merely change (via mutation, selection and other processes) in the genetic basis for morphogenesis over time. Of

"... the second law of thermodynamics ... deals only with the directionality of natural
processes and uses entropy, another defined quantity, to determine which directional processes are possible in nature and which are not."
If the snow has not stopped, but is still coming down, the
amount inside the courtyard must increase continually, and
this simulates the behavior of the entropy inventory in an
isolated system. Again, however, there is nothing to rule out
the formation of deep furrows (entropy decreases) at one or
more locations in the yard. It's just that the decreases
experienced in such regions will always be overcompensated by increases elsewhere.
The earth's biosphere, which is an open thermodynamic
system, can be simulated b~ subregion in the yard - one
into which the wind must be .channeled, thereby causing
deep local furrowing. The creationists' position concerning
entropy and the second law is tantamount to insisting that
no localized furrowing can occur during a snowstorm.

course, the living organism must draw its energy from its
surroundings, and, of course, to maintain a highly ordered
internal condition, it must rid itself of all the entropy it
produces while alive. That is how the second law affects
living organisms. As Levine notes in his text on physical
chemistry:
"Increasing entropy means increasing disorder. Living
organisms maintain a high degree of internal order.
Hence one might ask whether life processes violate
the second law....
(Indeed, there is no reason to
believe they do.) The statement (that entropy cannot
decrease) applies only to systems that are both closed
and thermally isolated from their surroundings. Living
organisms are open systems since they both take in

"Surely the creationists do not mean to argue that since the entropy is a universal
law, snowflake formation is impossible!"
Localized entropy reduction is an extremely common
phenomenon in livingand nonliving systems.alike. Indeed, it
occurs each time a snowflake forms. Despite their remarkably symmetrical and highly organized structures
(Bentley and Humphreys, 1931), billions upon billions of
snowflakes form all the time in colder climates. Moreover,
each one forms completely spontaneously and completely
naturally from a completely disorganized ensemble of
airborne vapor molecules! No two designs are ever identical, nor is there any genetic code to direct a snowflake's
growth or to ensure that all six of its arms will copy each
other as closely as they do. We have little idea as to why the
individual arms on a given flake match each other in such
detail but never match those on other flakes (Tolanskv,
1958). Some day we probably will achieve better under-

and expel matter; further, they exchange heat with

their surroundings. . . . The organism takes in
foodstuffs that contain highly ordered, low-entropy
polymeric molecules such as proteins and starch and
excretes waste products that contain smaller, less
ordered molecules. Thus, the entropy of the food
intake is less than the entropy of the excretion
products returned to the surroundings. . . . The
organism discards matter with a greater entropy
content than the matter it takes in, thereby losing
entropy to the environment to compensate for the
entropy produced in internal irreversible processes."
(pp. 123-124)
In a letter addressed to Dr. Vince D'Orazio (July 16,
1979), C.R. Dawkins, senior research officer in zoology at

"The (living) organism discards matter with a greater entropy content than the
matter it takes in, thereby losing entropy to the environment to compensate for the
entropy produced in internal irreversible processes."
standing of the mechanism involved, but the important
point is that spontaneous complex reductions in entropy
are commonplace in the natural world. Surely the creationists do not mean to argue that since the entropy principle is
a universal law, snowflake formation is impossible! To be
sure, scientists do not completely understand the genesis of
snowflakes or the evolutionary process, but a declaration
that either is "impossible" does not follow from the second
law of thermodynamics.
Austin, Texas

Oxford University, expressed his dismay over Morris's

assertion that the second law of thermodynamics contradicts evolution. "Morris's point about the second law of
thermodynamics is pathetic," he wrote. "Surely any chemist would accept that there can be local increases in order
fed by energy from outside the local system. This is what
happens when you synthesize something over a bunsen
burner."

June, 1983

Page 41

HOW UPHILL PROCESSES OCCUR

It is clear that the second law of thermodynamics does
not contradict the formation of snowflakes, the synthesis of
chemicals over a bunsen burner, the growth and development of living organisms, or the "uphill" evolution of life in
the biosphere. However, this still doesn't explain how uphill
processes occur.
In order to do so we must leave the subject of "classical"
descriptive thermodynamics, which provides descriptions
of natural phenomena (laws, constraints) but does not try to
explain them. As before, I willavoid rigorous discussion in
favor of metaphor, in order to convey the ideas in easy-tograsp fashion. Because engineers are so prominent in the
creationist leadership, I have chosen examples that should
be comprehensible to engineers, including creationist engineers.
As suggested above, an uphill or backward process can
spontaneously occur in nature by being somehow coupled
to a more dominant downhill process. By virtue of the
coupling, the downhill process can actually drive the other
process "backward" or in the so-called uphill direction. If
one employs tunnel vision and focuses only on the uphill
part, it may appear that any number of the basic laws are
being violated, not just the second law.

',:

,',

.
..

'. ~.

-~

FIGURE 2: The Hydraulic Ram Principle

Water from the low-lying reservoir R flows through the conduit
K until the spring-hinged "clack" valve C snaps shut. The pressure
surge thus created forces a small amount of water past flap valve
F, thereby compressing the trapped air A. The pressure surge
quickly terminates. Then the air A expands, keeping F closed and
forcing water up the standpipe toward the elevated tank E. Then
the spring-hinged clack valve opens again, allowing flow through
conduit K to build up until the clack valve once again snaps shut.
Much water is lost as spill-off S in order to elevate a very small
amount to tank E. However, Graham (1943) reports that seventytwo gallons per day can be elevated over a net liftof ninety feet by a
ram pump operating at 50% efficiency.

Consider the example of the self-operating ram pump

shown in Figure 2. It was developed in Britain and put into
operation during the late 1700s (Greene, 1911). By constructing a very simple arrangement of conduits, selfPage 42

June, 1983

operating flap valves, etc., any competent hydraulic engineer can get low-lyingwater to pump part of itself uphill into
storage tanks that may be well over a hundred feet in
elevation (Graham, 1943). The pumping process in this
simple but primitive system willrun continuously. As long as
there is an adequate supply of water in the low-lying
reservoir, it does not require any external source of power
(electrical, chemical, etc.), nor are any rotary or displacement pumps used in the operation (Zebrowski, 1980). All
that is necessary is a gently sloping topography so that a
downhill flow from the low-lying reservoir can be achieved.
The conduit system taps energy from this downhill flow in
order to pump a small portion to very high elevations.

"Despite his Ph.D. and his professorships

in hydraulics and hydrological engineering, Morris chooses to not mention this
rather widely known "hydraulic ram principle." The reason, in my view, is that the
ram is spectacularly inconvenient to his
argument, and, in fact, it provides a nice
analog for explaining how natural selec. wor ks. "
tion
Note that this rather antiquated hydraulic device lays
waste to Henry Morris's (1975) analysis in "Can Water Run
Uphill?" Despite his Ph.D. and his professorships in hydraulics and hydrological engineering, Morris chooses to
not mention this rather widely known "hydraulic ram
principle." The reason, in my view, is that the ram is
spectacularly inconvenient to his argument, and, in fact, it
provides a nice analog for "explaining" how natural selection works: In evolution the vast majority of mutations can
be regarded as degenerative, and that same vast majority
disappears. Natural selection saves the slight minority that
represent an improvement. Similarly, in the ram pump,
most of the water flows downhill through the pump and
disappears. The flap valve in a ram pump diverts only a tiny
amount to the elevated tank. In the ram, the elevation
energy is derived from the downward-flowing stream.
Natural selection depends upon the energy that causes
mutations to occur. Similarly, the energy requirements of
living systems are derived from the foodstuffs that flow
"downward" through the foodchains. Were one to neglect
the downhill stream of water in a ram or the downhill flow of
food energy in livingsystems, the attendant uphill processes
would appear to violate thermodynamic laws. Taking a
broader view, however, reveals that the "violations" are
only superficial.
Incidentally, using Morris's argument, it might seem
impossible for a sailboat to make any progress against a
headwind. Such is not the case, however, as any sailing
enthusiast knows. The knack of getting a proper coupling
between the stern oar and the sailor "lateen" was known to
sea captains as far back as the eighth century (Burke, 1978).
Another excellent example of a commonplace system
that exhibits uphill changes is a battery system. Under
ordinary circumstances, any given battery operates in only
one ("downhill") direction. Ifyou could see inside during this
The American Atheist

mode of operation, you would see the cations (positive ions)

migrating en masse toward the cathode, which becomes
positive, and the anions coursing their way to the anode or
negative terminal. These fluxes are set up and maintained
by spontaneous chemical reactions at the two electrodes,
reactions that left to themselves proceed in one way and
one way only because of the energy and entropy changes
that result.
Nevertheless, virtually all these unidirectional, internal
processes can be made to go "backward" merely by
properly coupling the battery to another one with larger
terminal voltage. When this is done, we say the weaker
battery is being charged. This charging is a decidedly
"uphill" process. In a very real sense, it is feeding off the
"downhill" processes going on in the stronger battery. Were
one to observe what is going on inside a battery being
charged and refuse to consider its surroundings (especially
the battery charger), one might well get the impression that
several basic laws of physics and chemistry were being
violated - especially the law of the conservation of energy
and the inflation of entropy law from thermodynamics. By
taking a little larger view of the open system, however, the
observer would immediately see that such is not at all the
case.

/-11"1

coir

',.'R.~S(q:N

ME.L18~AtJ[

:tV~'N'~T~

LOW

co

REGION
'DoIVAI

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UPJ.4ILL
..',. ~

UPHILL

FIGURE 3. Coupled Current Ionic Transport

Through Membranes
This figure illustrates multiple ion transport through membranes (modeled as a system of batteries joined in parallel). The
dominant ion Na+ (flowingto the right) flows"down" its concentration gradient, thereby setting up an electrical potential difference
that drives the other mobile cations, Ca++ and K+, to flow in the
opposite direction - "up" their concentration gradients. (Note: V
equals voltage; 1; equals battery; I equals current;
equals
resistance to current I.)

If many batteries or fuel cells are joined in parallel, as in

Figure 3, only the strongest one of the lot operates in the
discharge or downhill mode. All the others will be forced
into the charging or uphill mode of operation, at least until
their voltages build up to that of the charger. This serves as
a useful model for the multiple ion transport through cell
walls and other membranes in living tissue. Such a membrane can be modeled as a system of batteries or fuel cells
(one for each kind of ion) all coupled together in a common
parallel tank (Patterson, 1979). The ion having the greatest
of conductivity and gradient dominates the membrane as if
it were the strongest of several batteries in a parallel bank.
By operating in the downhill or discharge mode, this
dominant-ion "battery" drives all the others backwards, at
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least until they achieve the null-balance, fully charged

condition. This is one way that living cells build up high
internal concentrations of ions and then retain them more
or less indefinitely. By now, the similarity with ram pumps
should be obvious. In membranes, the dominant ion
behaves like the large downhill flow that is lost from the
reservoir. And, were this downhill flow not considered, the
backward fluxes would appear to be violating the second
law by migrating against their gradients.
The reader can improve on the above list of uphill
processes that proceed by being coupled to, and hence
energized by, a dominant downhill process of some sort.
Coupled chemical reactions of this sort are operative in
every living organism, and many similar ones have been
proposed in connection with molecular evolution, the
forerunner of organic evolution (perelson, 1975).
SELF ORGANIZATION
Closely related to the "paradox" of ongoing uphill
processes in nonliving systems is the apparent "paradox" of
spontaneous self-organization in nature. It is one thing for
an internally organized, open system to foster uphill processes by tapping downhill ones, but how did the required
internal organization come about in the first place? Indeed
the so-called dissipative structures that produce uphill
processes are highly organized (low entropy) molecular
ensembles, especially when compared to the dispersed
arrays from which they assembled. Hence, the question of
how they could originate by natural processes has proved a
challenging one. As before, creationist exhortations about
violations of the second law need not confuse the issue
because local decreases in entropy during self-organization
do not imply any such contradiction. Overcompensating
increases in entropy elsewhere need only be coupled with
the self-organization process. Again, the paradox is only
illusory and has only to do with how self-organization
occurs, not whether it does. But again we must leave the
realm of classical thermodynamics to seek explanation.

"It has been found that the imposition of

naturally occurring temperature gradients, pressure gradients, or composition
gradients can force a system into highly
nonuniform configurations that eventually become unstable relative to (and hence
transform into) highly organized configurations."
Current thinking holds that self-organization can be
understood in terms of theories advanced by Prigogine and
his colleagues (Prigogine, 1977,1980; Nicholis and Prigogine, 1977; Prigogine, Allen, Herman, 1977; Glansdorff and
Prigogine, 1971), who have devised some very plausible
explanations based upon statistical physics and new instability principles. The new instability principles apply to
systems in highly nonuniform states, what Prigogine calls
"far-from-equilibrium" states, but do not apply to the
uniform states treated in classical thermodynamics. The
new theory, for which Prigogine was awarded the 1977
Nobel Prize in chemistry, is sometimes called the theory of

June, 1983

Page 43

"non-equilibrium thermodynamics" (Lepkowski, 1979; Lukas, 1980) or, more often, the "theory of irreversible
thermodynamics." It posits a molecular structure for matter
and it inquires into the stabilities of molecular structures
under various nonuniform conditions.
It has been found that the imposition of naturally
occurring temperature gradients, pressure gradients, or
composition gradients can force a system into highly
nonuniform configurations that eventually become unstable relative to (and hence transform into) highly organized configurations. The latter would virtually never
become stable at or near equilibrium but are actually
favored when sufficiently intense gradients are imposed.
Prigogine calls these highly organized configurations dissipative structures and a fairly wide variety have been
described in theoretical analyses. Moreover, a good many
have also been produced in laboratory experiments carried
out in inorganic and organic media. The overwhelming
majority of biochemists and molecular evolutionists who
have looked into this matter realize that Prigogine's dissipative structures provide a very viable, perfectly natural
mechanism for self-organization, perhaps even for the
genesis of life from nonliving matter (abiogenesis). These
structures can be induced merely by imposing strong
temperature, pressure, or composition gradients. Indeed,
those formed in certain laboratory-simulated, pre biotic
broths have caused a great deal of excitement because of
their remarkable similarity to the simplest known forms of
life (d., Fox, 1980; Fox and Dose, 1977).
BIBLICAL APOLOGETICS AND ENGINEERING
When Martin Gardner described the arguments of young
earth advocates in the chapter called "Geology vs. Genesis" of his delightful book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of
Science (1957), he made no mention of either "scientific"
creationism or thermodynamics. Given the hoopla of
modern "scientific" creationism, one might think that its
proponents had made some new and momentous discoveries since 1957, thereby rendering Gardner's critique
obsolete. Yet many of the arguments advanced by "scientific" creationists are strikingly similar to, if not identical
with, those advanced many decades ago by past creationists and exposed by Gardner: for example, creation of an
earth with great "apparent age," the alleged circularity of
geological dating, the flood theory of fossils, etc. Equally
striking is the fact that the early creationists are rarely cited
by modern creationists, nor are they generally given credit
for the arguments they originated and champipned. For this
reason many modern proponents of creationism do not
realize that the "new" creation science of the 1960s is
virtually identical to the biblical apologetics devised in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to counter Darwin's theory. Even the thermodynamic arguments, of which
Gardner made no mention, were old. To be sure, they were
not worthy of mention: first, because they were absurd, and
second, because they had gained virtually no visibilityin this
country, possibly because of their inherent absurdity. It
required the audacity of Henry Morris to change all that.
Modern creationists generally credit Henry Morris with
discovering the "contradiction" between thermodynamics
and evolution. His arguments were first advanced in The
Genesis Flood (1961), which he coauthored with J.C.
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June, 1983

Whitcomb. This work has been identified by Clough (1969),

among others, as the seminal work that rekindled modern
interest in creationism and that laid the technical and
scientific groundwork for the "scientific" creation movement. In fact, on page 222 of The Genesis Flood, the
thermodynamic arguments against evolution are touted as
the scientific basis of creationism. But papers by earlier
creationist authors that had mentioned thermodynamics
were not alluded to or cited anywhere in The Genesis
Flood.

"... modern proponents of creationism

do not realize that the "new" creation
science of the 1960s is virtually identical
to the biblical apologetics devised in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
to counter Darwin's theory."
In the early 1940s R.E.D. Clark (1943) and E.H. Betts
(1944) both published papers entitled "Evolution and Entropy" and were awarded prizes for them by the Victorian
Institute, an organization founded to combat Darwinism in
Britain (White, 1900). Clark and Betts appear to be the first
creationists to use thermodynamics, and particularly the
second law, as an apologetic tool against evolution. Moreover, these articles covered virtually all the thermodynamic
arguments that today's "scientific" creationists attribute to
Morris. However, both papers remained in obscurity until
1954 when they were discussed by Bernard Ramm in The
Christian View of Science and Scripture (1954). It was
Ramm's conclusion that "thermodynamics may be fatal to
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evolution." Then, seven years hence, The Genesis Flood

appeared with numerous references to Ramm's book,
although none in Morris's "pioneering" section on thermodynamics.
It is not surprising that Morris capitalized upon the notion
that "thermodynamics may be fatal to evolution." Henry
Morris was a trained engineer who received his Ph.D. for
work in hydrology and hydraulic engineering from the
University of Minnesota. He was also one of the founders of
the Creation Research Society. Morris could use his status
as an engineer to promote the cause of christian fundamentalism quite effectively. After all, the science of classical
thermodynamics certainly had its roots in engineering, and
most engineers are rather well drilled in thermodynamic
principles and applications. If evolutionists could be lured
somehow into debating thermodynamics, rather than natural selection, fossil records, and other like topics, perhaps
the creationist engineers could become acclaimed contributors to the revival of fundamentalism. Thermodynamics
could never be easily debated by biologists, anthropologists, and geologists. And as experts in a "hard science"
firmly rooted in mathematical rigor (while evolution is less
so), engineers spouting the second law (even if wrongly)
could gain a definite advantage.
A decade after the publication of Whitcomb and Morris's
The Genesis Flood, two sister ministries of "scientific
creationists," both dominated by engineers, were in operation. These were the Creation Research Society, whose
Quarterly publishes what the creationists see as their best
theoretical, research, and review papers, and the Institute
for Creation Research, which houses the writing, speaking,
and educational ministries of Christian Heritage College, a
fundamentalist bible college in San Diego.

been particularly helpful in developing an apologetic against

abiogenesis .... " (1977, p. 7).
This is not to imply that engineers had discovered a real
weakness in evolution or even that their arguments make
sense for hydraulics engineering. Indeed, most engineers
will easily recognize the flaws in the entropy arguments of
modern creationists. Unfortunately, there has been some
reluctance by those most capable of exposing the errors of
these arguments to speak out. Some of the most vigorous
opposition has come from other creationists - those who
are competent in the field of thermodynamics and who are
appalled that their beliefs are being defended by such faulty
apologetics (viz., Cramer, 1978).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
"Scientific" creationism is an evangelical movement of
fundamentalist ministries dedicated not to the advancement of science but to the advancement of biblical inerrancy often at the expense of science. Basically the discourse of
scientific creationism is an elaborate but confusing system
of apologetics and polemics. It is designed to both defend
biblical "truths" and to undermine any scientific facts and
theories that contradict creationist interpretations of scripture. In some cases, Morris and his colleagues use ad
hominem polemics to attack evolution, as when they assert
that satan is the author of evolutionary theories (see, for
example, Morris 1963); more often they employ the apologetic device of obfuscation, especially with regard to the
second law.
Because the second law of thermodynamics is nonintuitive and because few people have studied it in depth, it is
ideally suited to the apologists' favorite techniques of
obscurantism. Moreover, the second law does provide a

"Itis a sad testimonial to the community of professors, engineers, and scientists that
so many have ignored their professional responsibilities in failing to expose the
creationist thermodynamics apologetic."
To a large extent, the creationists' polemics against
geologists, paleontologists, and biologists were not taken
very seriously as science by most educated persons until
"entropy" - a much more effective apologetic - was used.
Shrouded in mystique, entropy's potential for misinterpretation is well known even to students and practitioners
of thermodynamics. Claude Shannon, the inventor of the
uncertainty function in communications engineering and
the father of information theory, was advised by the
internationally renowned mathematician and scientist Jon
Von Neumann to call his new uncertainty function entropy
for two reasons: "In the first place, your uncertainty
function has been used in statistical mechanics under that
name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and
more important, no one knows what entropy really is, so in
a debate you will always have the advantage." [italics
added]. Tribus and McIrvine related this humorous little
anecdote in the September, 1971 issue of Scientific American (p. 180), and within a short time the entropy argument
against evolution was among the creationists' favorite
debate tools. Soon, D.R. Boylan, the most prestigious
engineering educator in the leadership of the creationist
movement, added his testimonial: "The second law has
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criterion for determining ifcertain processes are impossible

in nature. Hence, by misinterpreting the second law,
whether by ignorance or deliberate deception or both, the
creationists are able to convince unwitting audiences that
evolution is impossible.
In reality, however, the "uphill" processes associated
with life not only are compatible with entropy and the
second law, but actually depend on them for the energy
fluxes off of which they feed. Numerous other kinds of
backward processes in simpler, nonliving systems also
proceed in this way and do so in complete accord with the
second law. The creationists' second law arguments can
only be taken as evidence of their willingness to bear false
witness against science itself. It is a sad testimonial to the
community of professors, engineers, and scientists that so
many have ignored their professional responsibilities in
failing to expose the creationist thermodynamics apologetic.

REFERENCES CITED
Bentley, W.A. and Humphreys, W.J. 1931. Snow Crystals. New
York: McGraw-Hill.

June, 1983

Page 45 .

Betts, E.H. 1944. Evolution and entropy. Journal of the Transactions of the Victorian Society 76:118.
Boylan, D.R. 1977. Untitled statement. In Twenty-one scientists
who belieue in creation. 2nd ed. San Diego: Creation- Life Pubs.
Broda, E. 1975. The euolution of the bioenergetic processes, New
York/Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Bronowski, J. 1970. New concepts in the evolution of complexity.
Zygon 5:18-35.
Carnot, Sadi N.L. 1824. On the motive power of fire. As reprinted
in The second law of thermodynamics, (1976), ed. Joseph
Kestin, pp. 16-35. Stroudsburg, PA': Hutchinson & Ross.
Clark, R.E.D. 1943. Evolution and entropy. Journal of the
Transactions of the Victorian Society 75: 49-71.
Clausius, Rudolf J.E. 1865. Pogg. ann. bd. 125:400; also Meehanische warmetheorie 9:44. As cited by J.W. Gibbs in The
scientific papers of J. Willard Gibbs, vol. 1, p. 55. New York:
Dover (1961).
Clough, c.A. 1969. Eight years after: effect of The Genesis Flood.
Creation Research Society Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 81-88.
Cramer, J.A. 1978. General Evolution and the second law of
thermodynamics. In Origins and change: selected readings
from the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, ed.
David L. Willis, pp. 32-33. Elgin, IL The American Scientific
Affiliation.
Dawkins, c.R. 1979. Personal letter to Dr. Vince D'Orazio.
Feynman, Richard P., Leighton, Robert B., and Sands, Matthew.
1963. The second law. Lecture 44 in The Feynman Lectures on
Physics, vol. 1, section 44-2, p. 44-3. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley.
Fox, Sidney W. 1980. New missing links: how did life begin? The
Sciences (January) pp. 18-21.
Fox, Sidney W. and Dose, Klaus. 1977. Molecular evotution and
the origin of life. Rev. ed. New York: Marcel Dekker.
Gale, George. 1979. Theory of science, New York: McGraw-Hill.
Gardner, Martin. 1957. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of
Science. New York: Dover.
Glansdorff, P. and Prigogine, I., 1971. Thermodynamic theory of
structure, stability and fluctuations. New York: Wiley Interscience.
Graham, Frank D. 1943. Audel's pumps, hydraulics, air compres-

sors. New York: Theo. Audel & Co.

Greene, Arthur M. 1911. Pumping machinery. New York: Wiley.
Lepkowski, W. 1979.The social thermodynamics of Ilya Prigogine.
Chemical and Engineering News Analysis 57:30-33.
Levine, Ira N. 1978. Physical chemistry. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lukas, M. 1980. The world according to Ilya Prigogine. Quest/BO,
vol. 4, no. 10, pp. 15-18, 86-88.
Morris, Henry M. 1963. The twilight of euolution. Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Book House.
-. 1975. The troubled waters of evolution. San Diego: CreationLife Pubs.
Nicolis, G. and Prigogine, I. 1977. Self organization in nonequilibrium systems. New York: Wiley.
Patterson, John W. 1979. Ionic and electronic conduction in
nonmetallic phases. In Corrosion chemistry, eds. George
Brubaker and P. Beverly Phipps, pp. 96125. Washington, DC:
American Chemical Society.
Perelson, A.T. 1975. Network thermodynamics. Biophysical JournaI15:667-85.
Prigogine, Ilya. 1977. Time structure and fluctuations. Nobel
lecture in chemistry, reprinted in Science 201:77785.
-. 1980. From being to becoming. Mr. Francisco, CA: Freeman,
Cooper and Co.
Prigogine, Ilya, Allen, P.M., and Herman, R. 1977. The evolution of
complexity and the laws of nature. In Goals in a global
community, vol. II, eds. Erwin Laszlo and Judah Bierman. New
York/Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Ramm, Bernard. 1954. The christian uiew of science and scnpture. Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans Pubs.
Schrodinger, Erwin. 1945. What is life? New York: MacMillan.
Tolansky, S. 1958. Symmetry of snow crystals. Nature 181:25657.
Tribus, Myron and McIrvine, Edward C. 1971. Energy and
information. Scientific American, vol. 225, no. 3, pp. 179-88.
Whitcomb, John C. and Morris, Henry M. 1961. The genesis flood.
Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co.
White, Andrew D. 1900. A history of the warfare of science and
theology in christendom. New York: Appleton.
Zebrowski, Ernest, Jr. 1980. Practical physics. New York:
McGraw Hill.

:J

RELIGIOUS PACIFISM AND THE DRAFT

Cont'd

from pg.18

quo. If before he was an unbeliever, now he has made a

public profession of some form or degree of religious faith.
To conclude, it has already been established that the
armed forces of the United States do not require the service
of millions of untrained, short term conscripts. It does seem,
however, that Congress and the President have a very real
political need to submit young citizens to military discipline,
to the dictates of a chain of command. It also appears that
some religious organizations are assisting in no small way
the achievement of that design all the while feigning to work
against the draft, waging a mock battle with the Selective
Service System in favor of peace. The activities of the
quakers and other religious pacifists, all tax-exempt, may be
seen as carefully erecting a shield around the "war powers,"
neatly disarming all who threaten their continued exercise,
and virtually ensuring that Nuremberg will not only be the
first but also the last "trial in history for crimes against the
peace."
Can Atheists expect 19- and 20-year old American males
to see behind theological opposition to war? When the
Page 46

June, 1983

call-up is ordered and conscientious objection offered as an

alternative to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, what
reasonable young man will not respond to the substantial
reward? The activity of religious pacifists in the wake of
draft registration in 1980 should remind Atheists of the
wisdom of Emma Goldman, herself stripped of citizenship
and deported for opposing conscription in 1917, who
declared:
"The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what
potent poison inheres in the christian religion. That is
the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing
undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They
know only too well that the subtleness of the christian
teachings is a more powerful protection against
rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun."
("The Failure of Christianity," Red Emma Speaks,
Alix Kates Shulman, Ed. Vintage, 1972, page 187)

The American Atheist

Margaret Bhatty

SELECTIVE ABORTION
S.O.S. Foundling Home for admission. When asked whose
child she was, he replied, "She is ours. My wife and I had
three girls; and now that we have had a son, we want to
dispose of of the third daughter."
When applying for adoption, says Mrs. Beg, Indian
. families invariably want boys who must also be fair in
complexion. Children are well-loved where they are found
within stable family conditions, but there is no doubt that
religious tradition reflects considerable prejudice against
daughters. In many middle-class homes educational and
professional facilities are more readily given to the sons
since the daughters will inevitably marry. In hindu society
marriage is a social obligation and a pious duty placed upon
parents. Dowry has been declared illegal, so in place of cash
the bridegroom's family demand "gifts" in the form of cars,
scooters, refrigerators, TV sets and other luxuries which
are regarded as status symbols. In the Punjab, in the first
year of a daughter's marriage, her parents must give their
son-in-law more gifts during important festivals. And a
second round of gift-giving is called for when she has her
first child.
Not surprisingly, parents prefer not to have daughters.
Rituals for securing male issue are various and many,
involving piety, penance and pledges to the gods. Herbal
medicines are swallowed in the belief that they willinfluence
the unborn child's gender. Often, parents promise to pledge
a son to the service of a particular god or goddess. The
But though this is no longer done, the prejudice against girls tombs and shrines of famous saints who have become
is still deeply rooted. They are a liability to raise to associated with female fertility are visited to make offerings,
adulthood and thereafter a financial burden to marry off. In tie a red thread or leave some other token of their prayer .In
rural areas particularly, when girls fall sick, there is often Bombay the catholic shrine of "Mary of the Mount" is
visited by people of all religions in search of miraculous
deliberate neglect in getting them treated.

India's 1981 census figures showed that the existing gap

between males and females had widened still more. It is
likelythat the male-female ratio willcontinue to be weighted
in favour of males outnumbering females. This imbalance is
due to a number of interesting factors.
Whereas most countries, even with a reasonable standard of health, have a higher mortality rate among boy
babies than girl babies, in India this is reversed because of
social and religious bias against girl babies. Formerly female
infanticide was practiced by exposing girls at birth in the
open, or by applying poison to the nursing mother's nipples.

"(Boys) are an asset to their parents, likely to bring riches by way of dowry when they
marry, and for pious hindus a guarantee of salvation when they are present to light
the parental funeral pyre and c.arry out all the meticulous rituals prescribed."
Boys are reared more carefully. They are an asset to their
parents, likely to bring riches by way of dowry when they
marry and, for pious hindus, a "guarantee of salvation"
when they are present to light the parental funeral pyre and
carry out all the meticulous rituals prescribed. Girls are
barred from this kind of participation in funeral rites.
Mrs. Tara Ali Beg, a prominent social worker and writer
for children, with twenty-five years of experience in the
cause of destitute children, and now president of the S.O.S.
Children's Villages of India, is one of the most outspoken
critics of traditional Indian attitudes towards girls. In an
article carried by a weekly magazine, she tells of the case of
a man who brought a lovely three-year old girl to the Delhi
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cures or for the reward of issue. Astrologers and palmists

are consulted, and horoscopes are scanned - all in the
expectation that the unborn child will be a boy.
Girls are seen as a financial burden because of the
conventions of dowry and extravagance at the time of
marriage. Even banks advertising savings programs to
clients offer special schemes for putting away enough for
the day a daughter is married. A middle-class parent needs
to be prepared to pay anything up to 50,000 rupees ($4,000)
in dowry and spend another 100,000 rupees ($8,000) on
jewelry, clothes and the marriage itself. In rural areas
villagers who have no savings fallinto debt. Once a daughter
is married off to a "good" husband, most parents feel an

June, 1983

Page 47

intolerable burden has been lifted from their shoulders. But'

a man saddled with four or five daughters might find himself
quite ruined.
Even after a girl is married off and in her turn produces
nothing but girls, she is likely to incur the wrath of her
in-laws ..

These are some of the factors which reinforce the bias

against daughters in every religious community. And it is
this bias which is reflected in the use of sex- determination
tests of the unborn child being used to justify "selective"
abortions of female fetuses.

once she is told the unborn child is a girl."

Because of unhygienic conditions and medical malpractice bringing on serious complications after the test, many
wealthier families prefer to go to clinics in Bombay. One
prominent gynaecologist of a private clinic in the city
admitted to the reporter of a national daily that he had
performed at least 6,000 amniocentesis tests. "From beggars to top executives there is no limit to the craze. I get an
average of 8 to 10 cases a day."
When the whole sordid story broke in the national press
last year, there was somewhat hysterical reaction from

"InIndia, as in the rest of the world, women are their own worst enemies!"
Initially, these tests were introduced into government
hospitals to check sex-linked disorders, neural defects and
congenital deformities. But high officials and politicians
began using the facility in government clinics for selective
abortions. In an effort to stop the practice, in 1977 the
government banned these tests for any other than fetal
abnormalities. This drove them underground and into
private practitioners' clinics.
According to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy
(MTP) Act of 1971, abortion is legal in India for a 20- to
24-week old fetus. Since sex can be determined by 14 to 16
weeks, there is still a safety margin of four weeks. But
unethical practitioners often perform abortions even after
24 weeks if the tests confirm that the woman is carrying a
female fetus.
The first clinic to come out into the open is also one of the
first of its kind and located in Amritsar in the Punjab. It is
owned by a Sikh doctor and his gynaecologist wife. "If
abortion is acceptable," they argue, "what is wrong with
selective abortion?"
Clinics are now found in all major Indian cities for those
who can afford the fees. A prominent weekly magazine
published a report last year on the kind of patients admitted
to the Amritsar clinic. Their case histories are revealing.
The wife of a forest contractor was in for her fifth
pregnancy. After having four girls she had been advised that
another birth might prove fatal to her. But she said she was
prepared to take the risk ifclinical tests confirmed the fetus
was a male. (In India, as in the rest of the world, women are
their own worst enemies!)
A businessman, already father of four young daughters,
was jubilant because the test had proved his pregnant wife
now carried a son. A staff nurse from a family planning unit
had just had an abortion done because she already had
three girls and the test confirmed she was carrying a fourth.
She was determined not to have a fourth child, she said,'
until she was sure it was a son.
A 27-year old jeweller whose wife was admitted for tests
told the reporter, "Even though we are well-to-do, for
marrying my third sister we had to knock at two thousand
doors before we found a good husband for her. It's
humiliating. That is why my wife and I have decided that if
our second child is also going to be a girl, we'd much rather
have the pregnancy terminated."
The president of the Indian Medical Association, commenting on the increasing number of selective abortions
now being done, said, "There is not a single instance where
the expectant mother has decided not to have the abortion

social workers, women's organizations and in parliament.

But that was all. Doctors themselves are divided about the
ethics of the procedure. Many clearly support selective
abortion as a good means of birth control, since a couple
always decide to stop after they get the son they want.
Dr. D.N. Pai, Director of Family Planning, says that tests
should be allowed on "merit" after a woman has had only
daughters. When asked whether such action does not
reinforce prevailing prejudices against female children, he
replied, "The desire for a male child nurtured for centuries
cannot die. A country with a population problem like ours
needs sex-determination tests. All this talk of imbalance in
the male-female ratio is simply feminist propaganda."
Another doctor sees the tests as a means of preventing
the birth of yet another unwanted girl baby in a society
where she is likely to end up victim of severe social and
psychological pressures through no fault of her own. He has
a point there, for there is little hope for her in a tradition
which sees her as a kind of subspecies.
But demographers take a grave view of the widening gap.
A diminishing number of marriageable girls will further
reduce their status and lead to greater social and economic
victimization.

June, 1983

The American Atheist

Page 48

IN MEMORIAM
American Atheists has received notice that Bertha
Goodall of Ohio died March 14, 1983. She was a plainspoken but very poignant poetess. In remembrance, one
of her poems from the book titled simply Poems (published by American Atheists last year) is reproduced
below:

At Last

There she lay passed away

A woman who believed and lived her own way.
Openly she denounced the preachers
Called them hypocrites and parasites;
They in turn called her an Atheist.
With her will she left no instruction
No epitaph
No grave
No name
No birth date
No death date
Only ashes for wind to spread.

SUGGESTED AMERICAN ATHEIST

INTRODUCTORY READING LIST
Knowing that Atheist material is very hard to find in most public library sources in the United States,
American Atheists suggest the following publications which are available from us as an introduction into the
multifaceted areas of Atheism and state/church separation. To achieve the best understanding of thought in
these areas the featured publications should be read in the order listed. These by no means represent our
entire collection of Atheist and separationist materials. A more complete catalogue is available upon request
for $1.00.
All the Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask American Atheists with All of the Answers
by Jon Murray and Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [paper, 360 p.]
Freedom under Siege, The Impact of Organized Religion on Your Liberty And Your Pocketbook
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [cloth, 282 p.]
Separation of Religion and Government
by Frank Swancara [cloth, 246 p.]
Why I Am An Atheist, including a history of materialism
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [booklet, 40 p.]
What on Earth Is An Atheist! (A collection of programs from the American Atheist Radio Series)
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [paper, 287 p.]
The Case against Religion: A Psychotherapist's View
by Dr. Albert Ellis [booklet, 17 p.]
Pagan Origins of The Christ Myth
by John G. Jackson [booklet, 30 p.]
Sex Mythology
;
by Sha Rocco [booklet, 55 p.]
Ingersoll The Magnificent
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [booklet, 56 p.]
A Few Reasons for Doubting the Inspiration of The Bible
by Col. Robert G. Ingersoll [booklet, 30 p.]
'
Atheist Truth vs. Religion's Ghosts
by Cot. Robert G. Ingersoll [booklet,45 p.]
The Logic and Virtue of Atheism
by Joseph McCabe [booklet, 58 p.]
An Atheist's Bertrand Russell
ed. by Jon G. Murray [booklet, 50 p.]
Essays in Freethinking, Vol. I
Essays in Freethinking, Vol. II
Essays in Freethinking, Vol. III
Essays in Freethinking, Vol. IV
by Chapman Cohen [booklets, 112 p.]
$4.00 each, or set of four vols:
American Atheist Heritage: Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, and Burbank
by Joseph Lewis [booklet, 55 p.]
Our Constitution - The Way It Was
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [booklet, 54 p.]
Women and Atheism, The Ultimate Liberation
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [booklet, 22 p.]
Fruits of Philosophy
by Charles Knowlton, MD [booklet, 58 p.]
Why I Left The Roman Catholic Church
,
by Charles Davis, formerly Britain's leading catholic theologian
Letters from A Roman Catholic
by Carolynne Simms [two in one booklet, 27 p.]
War in Vietnam - The Religious Connection
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [booklet, 83 p.]
An Atheist Epic: Bill Murray, The Bible and The Board of Education
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair [paper, 316 p.]
Essays of An Atheist Activist
.
by Jon G. Murray [booklet, 67 p.]
The Ten Commandments
by Joseph Lewis [cloth, 644 p.]
Order from:

American Atheist Press

P.O. Box 2117
Austin, TX 78768-2117

$6.95
lO.OO
5.00
3.00
5.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
3.29
3.29
3.29

12.00
4.00
3.00
2.50
4.00

3.00
4.00
3.00
3.29
.42.50

AMENDMENT

CONGRESS

SHALL

MAKE NO LAW RESPECTING

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